Minnesota HIV Rates Jump, Officials Say

New HIV infections among white men in Minnesota jumped 40 percent last year. Also there was a 61 percent increase in HIV among African-born immigrants in the state. African immigrants make up less than 1 percent of the state's population but 16 percent of HIV cases.

After declining for five years, the number of reported HIV infections among white men rose from 93 to 130 in 2001, according to the Minnesota Health Department. The increase is almost exclusively among gay and bisexual men. If the trend continues, it could mean that young adults have a cavalier attitude about AIDS, or that because people are living longer with AIDS, they are exposing more people to the disease.

Until this year, the Health Department had combined data on African immigrants with data on blacks. The separate African immigrant increases reflect international AIDS features, including an increase in heterosexual transmission -- women were infected in higher numbers than men -- and a strain of the virus not commonly found in US AIDS patients.

Officials believe that more outreach programs must be designed for immigrants because of the stigma of AIDS in African-immigrant communities. In the Somali community, said Saeed Fahia, executive director of the Confederation of Somali Communities in Minnesota, no one would come to a meeting billed as an AIDS or safe-sex discussion.

Minneapolis is one of six US urban centers for HIV-positive African refugees who have been granted asylum for other reasons. Those HIV cases -- 49 since 2000 -- are not included in the new Health Department figures. There are also many other immigrants who are not refugees and who were infected in their native countries. The number is not known.

Although still small, the African-immigrant population in Minnesota has been steadily increasing since the mid-1990s. Estimates of Somalis range from 3,000 to 50,000.

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