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HIV/AIDS in the US

Poverty, violence, lack of affordable health care, and unequal access to education are factors that contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS both in the US and developing countries. Likewise, HIV/AIDS has disproportionally impacted ethnic minorities and communities of color in the US and worldwide. 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 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 capital city has a 5% HIV infection rate that rivals that of many developing countries—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 one-third of HIV infections in the US, or roughly 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:

    NationalAIDSStrategy.org
    AIDSVote.org
    The Balm in Gilead
    Campaign to End AIDS
    Harm Reduction Coalition
    Latino Commission on AIDS
    National Minority AIDS Council