A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic

AIDS in Black America continues to worsen, with as many as 30,000 new HIV infections among Blacks occurring each year. Yet the response of the U.S. to what is perhaps the most serious health crisis facing Black America remains remarkably timid.

This report by the Black AIDS Institute examines the sources and ramifications of America's apathy in the face of an epidemic that grows more acute with each passing year. It does so by comparing America's low-priority effort on AIDS in Black America with the U.S. government's vigor in addressing the global AIDS epidemic. By asking how the U.S. government might respond to Black America's AIDS problem were Black America a separate country of its own, useful lessons can be drawn about how the federal government can reinvigorate efforts to mitigate and control America's domestic epidemic.

In allowing the AIDS crisis in Black America to grow ever more severe, the U.S. government is failing to adhere to its own successful strategies for responding to the global AIDS epidemic. While insisting that every foreign country that receives U.S. assistance have a national AIDS strategy, the U.S. government still has no national strategy to fight its own epidemic almost three decades after AIDS first appeared. The U.S. government has dramatically scaled up funding for foreign AIDS assistance as the global epidemic has expanded, while cutting spending in real terms for essential HIV prevention and care initiatives on which Black America depends. And by pretending that its own epidemic is wholly distinct from the global AIDS epidemic, the U.S. government is ignoring reality and failing to learn critical lessons that could be applied at home and abroad.