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| PRESS CONTACT: Office of Communications CDC, National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention (404) 639鈥?895 |
Since 1981, 774,467 cases of AIDS have been reported in the United States and 448,060 of these individuals have died. An estimated 800,000-900,000
Americans are now living with HIV infection. Of these, as many as 300,000 remain unaware of their infection. In addition to summarizing the
overall magnitude of the U.S. epidemic to date, this article reviews the evolution of the HIV epidemic and the public health response to stem its
toll. CDC has played a central role in the response to the HIV epidemic since investigating the first cases in 1981. In partnership with state and
local organizations, CDC has tracked the course of the epidemic for two decades, conducted field and laboratory research to identify effective
interventions, and implemented targeted prevention programs nationwide. Estimates of HIV incidence over time suggest that new infections peaked at
over 150,000 in the mid-1980s, were reduced to an estimated 40,000 a year in the early 1990s, and have been held at roughly this level throughout
the last decade.
Since AIDS was first documented in the 1980s, 20 million people have died from the disease worldwide.
| PRESS CONTACT: Office of Communications CDC, National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention (404) 639鈥?895 |
Today, AIDS is the leading cause of death in Africa and the fourth leading cause of death globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 25 million
people are living with HIV. As young adults perish from the disease, children are orphaned, social support systems fail and countries鈥?gross
domestic products decline. In Zambia for example, access to education has been affected as schools cannot train teachers fast enough to replace
those who have died of AIDS. In Asia, the epidemic is beginning to spread with 3.5 million people infected as of 1998 in India alone. In Eastern
Europe, Russia reported 10,000 cases of HIV in 1999, now there are 70,000. Despite these trends, prevention efforts 鈥?including access to
counseling and testing, promoting the use condoms and clean syringes, availability of drugs to reduce opportunistic infections and mother-to-child
transmission and testing of the blood supply 鈥?are slowing the epidemic in several countries. In Uganda, the HIV prevalence rate has fallen from
14% in the early 1990s to 8% in 2000 due to strong government-support of HIV prevention programs. In Thailand, HIV prevalence has decreased in
military recruits and women attending antenatal clinics, after a 100% condom use campaign was introduced for commercial sex.
A survey of 2,942 men who have sex with men (MSM) in six cities indicates that 4.4% of young MSM, ages 23-29, are newly infected with HIV each year (HIV incidence).
| PRESS CONTACT: Office of Communications CDC, National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention (404) 639鈥?895 |
HIV incidence was highest among African-American MSM, with 14.7% becoming infected annually, compared to 3.5% of Hispanics and 2.5% of whites. CDC
cautioned that the sample size was small and the findings may not be representative of all gay men. However, with the extremely high incidence,
CDC believed the release of these data were of critical public health importance. Even the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval, 7.9%,
indicates an extraordinarily high level of infection among African-American MSM in this study. The survey, Phase II of CDC鈥檚 Young Men鈥檚 Survey,
was conducted in Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Seattle from 1998 through 2000. HIV incidence was determined through
the application of CDC-developed testing technology to 290 of 373 HIV-positive samples.
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