US Epidemic
Poverty, violence, lack of affordable health care and unequal access to education are all factors contributing to the epidemic in the US as well as developing countries. Ethnic minorities have been disproportionately affected by the AIDS crisis in the US, as is the case in communities of color across the globe. Men who have sex with other men–another group within the US with high rates of HIV/AIDS–also face discrimination and a lack of access to services.
Unsound Policy at Home and Abroad
Meanwhile, policies that reflect political ideology rather than the reality of people’s lives have hurt rather than helped in the fight against AIDS, globally and domestically. For example, telling youth to abstain from sex as the sole option for preventing HIV, when most American teenagers are sexually active, ignores the hard facts at the expense of potentially successful HIV prevention programs. Likewise, forcing abstinence-only programs on developing nations devastated by HIV/AIDS undermines their HIV prevention efforts by denying them the opportunity to use every tool available in their prevention toolkits.
GAA United with Domestic AIDS Groups
The need to unite on AIDS issues at both the national and global levels is clear, which is why GAA is taking action in the US as well. For example, GAA is collaborating with domestic organizations to stop cuts to Medicaid, which is a critical program for providing health care to low-income Americans, including an estimated 100,000 people with AIDS. GAA has also worked with organizations to expand access to sterile syringes in the US. In particular, we pushed for the Congressional decision to allow the District of Columbia to fund a needle-exchange program for intravenous drug users.
No National Plan for AIDS
While the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS calls for all countries to develop a national AIDS strategy, the US–whose very capitol city has a 5% infection rate–has no such plan. The Global AIDS Alliance is a proud supporter and signatory of the National AIDS Strategy. The following statistics about domestic HIV/AIDS are sourced from this campaign unless otherwise noted:
- Every year about 40,000 people are newly infected with HIV in the US; the HIV infection rate has not fallen in 15 years.
- People of color are among those most affected by the epidemic, with African Americans accounting for almost half of new infections and Latinos for 18%.
- Half of Americans living with HIV are not receiving treatment even when they meet the medical criteria for receiving it.
- Use of contaminated needles cause a third of HIV infections in the US–8,000 new infections a year–according to the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project.
- Insufficient results from domestic HIV/AIDS programs have had serious human and economic costs. Failure to cut HIV infection rates by half will likely lead to $18 billion in excess spending from 2003 to 2010.
Please visit the following sites to find out how to get involved in your own community or learn more about HIV/AIDS in the US: