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Government Underestimates Number of Americans With AIDS
August 04, 2008 04:23 PM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
The CDC announced that the number of Americans contracting AIDS each year is 40 percent higher than previously stated.
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A new blood test for the AIDS virus and new statistical methods indicate that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s estimate of how many Americans are contracting AIDS each year has been off by more than 16,000 people. CDC director Julie Gerberding said “this is the most reliable estimate we’ve had since the beginning of the epidemic.”
But others feel that the new information indicates a governmental lapse in addressing America’s own health issues. Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, called the new estimate “evidence of a failure by government and society to do what it takes to control the epidemic.”
There have been rumors about the new numbers since December of 2007. The CDC refused to confirm that its estimate had been low, although a few papers had already reported on the revision. “We hope that this is not yet another instance of the Bush administration’s suppression of information that could be damaging to their image,” Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, told Reuters.
The new information was announced just after Congress passed a bill allocating $48 million in AIDS relief to Africa. The new statistics will likely cause the government to focus more attention on solving the national health crisis, rather than sending money abroad.
Meanwhile, the 17th International AIDS Conference is underway in Mexico City, with pharmaceutical companies playing a primary role. But author Helen Epstein says, “you can’t fight AIDS without medicine, but you also can’t fight AIDS with medicine alone.”
But others feel that the new information indicates a governmental lapse in addressing America’s own health issues. Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, called the new estimate “evidence of a failure by government and society to do what it takes to control the epidemic.”
There have been rumors about the new numbers since December of 2007. The CDC refused to confirm that its estimate had been low, although a few papers had already reported on the revision. “We hope that this is not yet another instance of the Bush administration’s suppression of information that could be damaging to their image,” Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, told Reuters.
The new information was announced just after Congress passed a bill allocating $48 million in AIDS relief to Africa. The new statistics will likely cause the government to focus more attention on solving the national health crisis, rather than sending money abroad.
Meanwhile, the 17th International AIDS Conference is underway in Mexico City, with pharmaceutical companies playing a primary role. But author Helen Epstein says, “you can’t fight AIDS without medicine, but you also can’t fight AIDS with medicine alone.”
Headline Link: CDC revises AIDS statistics
A new blood test can determine how recently a patient contracted AIDS; that, plus new methods of statistical analysis suggest that the number of Americans infected with AIDS each year is 40 percent higher than the CDC previously estimated. For the past 12 years, the CDC believed that 40,000 people were infected each year; the new data corrects that figure to approximately 55,000 people per year. Although the U.S. has increased efforts to tackle the AIDS crisis in foreign countries, domestic spending on the virus has been low for the past seven years.
Source: The Times Union (AP)
Background: Evolution of CDC analysis
In December 2007, reports began circulating that the old estimate was incorrect, but the CDC refused to confirm the numbers until more tests had been run. Some were concerned that the truth would never be released. At the time, AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told Reuters, “We hope that this is not yet another instance of the Bush administration's suppression of information that could be damaging to their image, especially in light of the fact that the spike in new infections is, at least in part, likely due to failed policies of the administration, including the promotion of abstinence-only ‘prevention messages and the failure to promote condom use.” In contrast, the UN announced that it had overestimated the number of worldwide AIDS sufferers by 7 million.
Source: Reuters
Related Topic: Fighting the AIDS epidemic
The “face” of the AIDS epidemic in the United States has changed, according to Marilyn Swyers, manager of AIDS Outreach for the East Alabama Medical Center. AIDS was once viewed as a disease found primarily in gay white men in big cities. “Twenty-seven years later,” however, Swyers says “it is disproportionately affecting the African-American and Latino populations.” Hispanics have gone rather unnoticed in terms of HIV infection rates. They account for 14 percent of the United States population, yet represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses in 2006.
Source: findingDulcinea
The Los Angeles Times reports that the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City is being heavily attended by pharmaceutical companies. The paper reports that while medicine is being treated like the only and best solution, “you can't fight AIDS without medicine, but you also can't fight AIDS with medicine alone.” In many African countries, medicine is thrown out because of the attached stigma. If education does not go hand in hand with medication, says author Helen Epstein, the epidemic will not be conquered.
Source: Los Angeles Times (free registration may be required)
After weeks of delay, the Senate voted Wednesday to approve the PEPFAR bill, sending $48 billion of AIDS relief to Africa over the next five years. In 2003, President George W. Bush introduced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), committing $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa. It was very effective in providing treatment to AIDS victims and now the Senate has tripled funding over the next five years. The $50 billion PEPFAR bill passed through the House in April and had bipartisan support in the Senate, but a group of seven Republican senators blocked a vote on the bill. Though they supported PEPFAR, they objected to the cost and what initiatives it would cover.
Source: findingDulcinea
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