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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 09:43 pm: | 
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Article published Feb 1, 2007
Feb 1, 2007
Study: HIV infection dropping among blacks in Florida
By DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press Writer
Quote:
"Comparable data for the nation as a whole on new HIV diagnoses isn't readily available because data isn't collected on all cases. But federal figures on new cases of AIDS, the disease caused by HIV infection, show a similar, though far less dramatic, decline among blacks."
HIV infection in black Floridians dropped by an average of more than 8 percent per year for men and more than 10 percent a year for women between 1999 and 2004, according to a study released Thursday by federal officials.
The analysis of new HIV diagnoses by the Florida Department of Health and released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that the decline was real and not due to a reduction in testing, which went up during the period.
The rate of HIV diagnosis among blacks in Florida dropped from 224 cases per 100,000 people in 1999 to 134 in 2004, the analysis found. By contrast, the rate for whites remained about the same, going from 18.8 cases per 100,000 to 18.4 cases over the same period.
Comparable data for the nation as a whole on new HIV diagnoses isn't readily available because data isn't collected on all cases. But federal figures on new cases of AIDS, the disease caused by HIV infection, show a similar, though far less dramatic, decline among blacks.
The number of AIDS cases in the black community nationwide decreased steadily from 2001 to 2004, according to CDC figures, dropping about 10 percent over the entire period, with the largest annual decline about 6 percent.
While activists and health officials hailed the Florida figures, they cautioned that the rate of HIV and AIDS in the black community is still extraordinarily high, and the gap between whites and blacks still wide.
"I am so happy to see the decreases in the black community, but I don't want to hurt my arm patting myself on the back, because we still have a lot to do," said Charles W. Martin, executive director of the South Beach AIDS Project, which focuses on outreach and prevention efforts in Miami's minority communities.
"When we're still over 50 percent of the cases," said Martin, who is black, "there's only so much celebrating we can do."
State health researchers also found that gonorrhea diagnosis rates decreased among black men and women statewide during the same period by more than 7 percent a year, indicating that the drops in both might be due to a reduction in risky sexual behavior.
Officials say targeted outreach to the black community appears to be raising awareness about HIV infection.
"We're really trying to close that gap," between higher black infection rates and those in the white community said Tom Liberti, the Florida Department of Health's HIV/AIDS Bureau Chief.
The state has boosted the number of billboards trying to raise HIV awareness in minority communities and held meetings with minority groups, as well as supporting the work of local outreach groups.
Liberti also attributed part of the decrease in infections to more testing and early detection of the disease - because once people know they're infected, they tend to take steps to avoid infecting sexual partners.
Florida has one of the largest publicly-funded HIV testing programs in the country, conducting about 300,000 tests a year.
Nationally, more than a million Americans are believed to be HIV-positive, and federal officials have acknowledged they've fallen short on goals for cutting new infections. Federal government statistics show blacks account for just under half of HIV cases nationwide - while they make up less than 15 percent of the population as a whole. And in 2004, the rate of new AIDS cases among blacks was more than 10 times as high as the rate among whites, according to federal government statistics.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070201/APN/702012944 |
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