More Living With HIV, but Concerns Remain

On Monday at the 2005 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta, CDC presented findings that it said offer the clearest picture of the current extent of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

Thanks to life-prolonging drug therapies, the number of Americans living with HIV climbed by 100,000 between 2000 and 2003 to an estimated 1 million. But CDC said an estimated one-quarter of HIV-infected people do not know they are infected and thus do not access the medications.

HIV diagnoses have shown steady declines among adolescent and young adult women in all ethnic groups, agency officials said, noting that some prevention programs are yielding substantial results. Among males, however, diagnoses have climbed in recent years. HIV is having the greatest impact on African-Americans and gay men, according to data from December 2003, the latest available. Of the estimated 1 million HIV-positive Americans, 47 percent are black; 34 percent are white; 17 percent are Hispanic; and 2 percent are Asian Pacific Islanders, American Indians or Alaska natives. Forty-five percent of the infected are gay men; 27 percent of transmissions occurred heterosexually; and 22 percent of infections were acquired via injection drug use. Men account for about 75 percent of HIV infections.

Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of CDC's HIV prevention program, said that while the calculation method used does not directly measure new infections, there is no indication that diagnoses have increased among women, injecting drug users and heterosexuals. The results are consistent with other data showing a resurgence of HIV among young gay men, he said.

Some advocates, including the leaders of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, cited long-term underfunding of HIV efforts and blamed the government for the increase.

CDC "clearly has not achieved" its 2001 goal -- set after the Institute of Medicine released a report critical of the government's anti-AIDS efforts -- of halving annual infections, from 40,000 to 20,000, by 2005, Valdiserri said. This points out the need for more people to be tested and learn their results, he said.

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