There are several encouraging statistics to celebrate about HIV/AIDS: The UN says that world HIV/AIDS-related deaths have fallen 21% since their peak in 2005. The cost of treatment has decreased steadily in recent years. And plenty more statistics point to overwhelmingly positive progress. But if there’s one thing that threatens the road to AIDS-free world, it’s complacency: As we celebrate milestones and statistics, it’s also important to note that not all problems are solved.

-Team@CMHF

• There are still huge racial disparities in U.S. treatment; there are still astounding numbers of American HIV patients who don’t have their disease under control, and there are still states where treatment availability and options are shamefully bad. All of which add up to lingering risk factors, in spite of other markers of success.
• According to recent statistics, only 28% of Americans living with HIV have the virus under control. The other 72% either don’t know they have it at all, don’t have access to adequate care, or don’t consistently take their medications, for various reasons.
• But suppressing the virus through treatment can reduce transmission risk by up to 96%, and according to doctors, treatment isn’t something that should be difficult to provide
• It’s now very clear that we have the tools to stop HIV in an individual and to stop the spread of HIV in a community, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a telephone interview.
• We also know that taking treatment for HIV can prevent people from progressing to AIDS and from developing many of the serious complications of HIV, which unfortunately does remain an incurable infection, Frieden said.
• The new global AIDS priorities set by Hillary Clinton for World AIDS Day involve focusing on HIV drugs, but the CDC is also launching a campaign to focus on specific communities where AIDS is most prevalent. Particularly, they’re pushing for better testing amongst black gay and bisexual men—a community in which HIV infection rates is incredibly high.
• But while specific demographics can help target the focus of education, testing and treatment, there are also huge geographical disparities—and not just globally.
• While California state is proudly reporting lowered HIV/AIDS hospitalization rates, Salon also reported a shockingly bad portrait of the state of Mississippi, which has the highest new infection rate and highest number of citizens living with HIV or AIDS in the country, and abominably poor treatment and education:
• Elsewhere, HIV/AIDS has become manageable with anti-retroviral therapy, but a Mississippian with HIV/AIDS is almost twice as likely to die than the average American with the virus; HIV-positive African-Americans in Mississippi are ten times as likely to die from it than their white neighbors. African-Americans are only 37.5 percent of the population, but represent 78 percent of new HIV infections. Meanwhile, an abstinence-education statute forbids even programs offering information about condoms to demonstrate how to use them, but does include a requirement to mention the anti-sodomy laws still on the books.
• On top of that, discrimination is so bad—and safeguards against it so lacking—that Human Rights Watch reported that the services available to vulnerable populations in Mississippi are “…leaving people with HIV/AIDS without treatment at rates comparable to those in Botswana, Ethiopia, and Rwanda.”
• The state’s history of stigma and discrimination (even from health care professionals), has made much of its African American community distrustful of the medical system in general.
• All of which is depressing, to say the least.
• But the point is that, while we have made great strides in the first 30 years with AIDS, there’s still progress to be made, and most of it starts with education and awareness.

For further reading log on to
http://blisstree.com/live/aids-day-2011-hiv-rates-management-of-disease-223/