AFRICAN AMERICAN AND HIV/ AIDS

The AIDS epidemic has had a devastating effect on African Americans. By December 2001, the CDC had reports of 315,000 cases of AIDS in African Americans, of an overall figure of 816,000 cases of AIDS. Of 362,827 Americans living with AIDS as of December 2001, 42 percent were African Americans.

Researchers estimate that one in 50 African- American men and one in 160 African-American women are infected with HIV. Sadly, African- American children represented two-thirds (65 percent) of all reported cases of pediatric AIDS.

New HIV infections among African Americans in the United States in 2001 were 54 percent, although they are only 13 percent of the U.S. population. Of new HIV infections in women in the United States in 2001, 64 percent were in African- American women. Of new infections in men in the United States as of December 2001, half were in African-American men.

Health care professionals are acutely aware that the prevention thrust to reach African Americans
must take into consideration that in those African Americans with AIDS, men who have sex with
men are the largest percentage (37 percent) of reported cases since the start of the AIDS epidemic.

In African-American men, the second most frequent exposure is injection drug use (34 percent),
followed by heterosexual exposure (8 percent cumulative cases). In African-American women, injection drug use accounts for 42 percent (since the outset of the AIDS epidemic), and 8 percent of cumulative cases stem from heterosexual exposure.

In studying prevention challenges for African Americans, researchers have found that two common ways substance abuse leads to HIV and other STDs are trading sex for drugs and sharing needles.

Another arm of the prevention effort has looked at enlisting the help of local leaders in acknowledging
the problem and helping to combat HIV/AIDS in their communities.