During the Leading for Life summit, Phill Wilson, an AIDS policy expert and activist, spoke about his personal experience with HIV.

"How many of us will be infected before it becomes our problem? How many will develop AIDS? How many will die? Three hundred thousand cases later, I still wonder what has to happen for it to be our problem."
-- Phill Wilson

The Crisis

In the past ten years, the face of the AIDS epidemic in this country has shifted dramatically. Initially, gay white men were most identified with the epidemic. This perception persists today, despite the reality that HIV has overwhelmingly spread within communities of color, affecting men, women, and children. Every day, in fact, nearly one hundred people of color in the United States are diagnosed with AIDS.

Imagine the losses in the African American community: The equivalent of two large classrooms of young men and women are being infected with HIV each day. That's a large church choir or several football squads infected each day.

Here are just some of the ways that AIDS is devastating the African American community:

• Today, 300,000 to 500,000 African Americans are already infected with HIV. Most are young. Many live in the poorest neighborhoods.

• African Americans account for 12 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, over 40 percent of current AIDS cases in the United States are among African Americans.

• AIDS kills more than twice as many African American men aged 25 to 44 as homicide. In fact, AIDS has become the leading cause of death for African Americans under age 55, before heart disease, cancer, and homicide.

• African American women constitute two-thirds of all cases of women with HIV reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• More African American children are infected with HIV than children of all other races and ethnicities combined.

• In 1996, the number of AIDS deaths in the United States declined for the first time in the epidemic. Yet the number of African Americans infected with HIV continues to climb.

• By the year 2000, an African American woman will be nearly 20 times more likely to have AIDS than a non-African American woman.

• By the year 2005, it is estimated that 60 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States will be among African Americans.

Photo credit: John Chase




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