On Aug. 3, HIV/AIDS professionals from around the world gathered in Mexico City for the 17th International AIDS conference. The streets of the city were filled with thousands of militant protesters from all corners of the globe who demanded a true, well-funded, internationally coordinated global effort to stop the AIDS epidemic. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation initiated the mass multinational rally.
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Though the corporate media and government outlets portray the anti-AIDS effort as improved and even as “making progress,” their story contradicts the evidence. Recent new revised statistics released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reveal that the AIDS crisis in the United States and abroad is far from subsiding and remains out of control.
These statistics indicate that, instead of the previously estimated 40,000 new HIV infections in the United States over the past 12 months, the actual figure is more than 56,000. Those showing the greatest increases in rates of infection are African Americans and gay and bisexual men. (CNN, Aug. 4)
More than 1 million people are living with HIV in the United States, and it is estimated that about one-fourth of those infected are unaware that they are HIV-positive (CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Volume 18). Rather than launching a major effort to curtail the AIDS crisis through mass testing and education, the government and corporate media have stigmatized, discriminated and denied basic treatment and care to those living with HIV and AIDS.
A scathing indictment
Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, blasted the U. S. government for its mishandling of the AIDS epidemic. “These numbers,” he said, “are a scathing indictment of how profoundly U.S. and CDC prevention efforts have failed.” (Reuters, Aug. 2)
Calling for a $200-million program to test millions of people in the United States for HIV infection, Weinstein added, “Identifying and linking them to treatment is the only way to break the chain of new infections and begin to address the nation’s runaway epidemic.”
Funding for testing would be at best a starting point. Money for comprehensive care must be made available so that working people and the poor have access to proper treatment.
The figures provide a shocking view of the crisis. While capitalist pharmaceutical companies rake in billions in the profits, meager government programs are mired in racism, homophobia and disdain for the poor and oppressed of this country. The rates of infection continue to grow among gay and bisexual men, Latinos, African Americans, women, the poor, and other oppressed communities.
HIV infections soar among African Americans
Every year, African Americans account for 45 percent of infections or 25,000 cases. This means that African Americans are seven times more likely to contract HIV than whites.
A study published in August by the Black AIDS Institute demonstrates that the epidemic among African Americans is as severe as in some areas of Africa. The report points out that the epidemic is a generalized threat to the entire U.S. Black population, not an epidemic restricted to specific high-risk groups.
In Washington, D.C., 80 percent of people living with HIV are African American. In addition, African American women currently represent the group with the fastest growing rate of infection nationwide. Of new infections among Black men and women, 46 percent were the result of heterosexual contact.
With the highest rate of HIV infection in the United States, at 5 percent, about one in every 20 Washington, D.C., residents is infected with HIV. This number is nearly as high as the 5.4 percent infection rate in Uganda, which suffers from one of the worst AIDS epidemics in Africa.
“If African Americans made up their own country, it would rank 16th globally in the number of people living with HIV”, writes Black AIDS Institute founder Phil Wilson. “We do not have a national AIDS strategy.”
Wilson points out that the United States lacks the infrastructure to handle even the previously estimated 40,000 new cases of HIV infection each year, let alone the newly revised number of 56,000.
Without a centralized, international scientific research effort, attempts to understand and find a vaccine and cure for AIDS have fallen prey to a profit-driven system that lacks coordination and direction. Lack of funding to provide treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS has left millions alone and without support.
The capitalists, always hell-bent on securing megaprofits for the giant health care corporations, have denied and sabotaged programs that would reach into the oppressed sectors of the population with education, testing, support and care.
This legacy of criminal neglect will no doubt be viewed by future generations as yet another disgraceful example of the brutality and outright bigotry of the profit-hungry capitalist period, where even health care is treated as a privilege instead of a basic human right.
