Chicago Sees AIDS Leap Racial, Gender Lines

African-American Chicagoans are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, accounting for 67 percent of all new cases in the city in 2000 despite representing just 36 percent of the population, according to a Chicago Department of Public Health study. Latinos accounted for 15 percent of the new cases. The study also found the rate of diagnosed AIDS cases among Chicago women nearly tripled in the last decade, with African-American women accounting for nearly 80 percent of all women with AIDS in the city. Still, the AIDS rate among men -- particularly those who have sex with men, whether or not they identify themselves as gay -- remains higher.

Although Chicago's statistics are in line with national trends, Alderperson Billy Ocasio said they were troubling enough that the Health Committee would schedule a series of citywide public hearings and pressure state and federal lawmakers to increase funding and services for people with AIDS. An estimated 28,000 people in Chicago have HIV/AIDS.

Most AIDS cases in Chicago women are reported to be from injection drug use, but increasingly, sexual transmission also is a significant factor. "Women are having heterosexual contact with men who are either injection drug users or at some time have had sex with another man and contracted the virus," said Alicia Bunton, site director of St. Stephan's Respite, which treats AIDS patients.

Alderperson Carrie Austin, whose West Side ward has an AIDS rate among the city's highest, urged mandatory testing. Her son learned he had AIDS only because he was subjected to mandatory testing at a drug rehabilitation facility. "The epidemic is on such a rise now that it's too high of a consequence now to [test] voluntarily," Austin said. Alderperson Walter Burnett, who revealed that his sister, a recovering drug addict, is HIV-positive, also advocated mandatory testing. But Sean Smith, public policy manager for Howard Brown Health Center, countered: "From a public health standpoint, we still believe the best way to really tackle this epidemic is through informed, voluntary testing," he said. "If you get into a situation where you force people to get tested, you add more shame and you add more fear."

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