Are We Suffering From AIDS Amnesia?
Saturday, June 27th is National HIV Testing Day and Newsweek has a great piece on their blog about what they call “AIDS Amnesia” Quoting Dr. Susan Blumenthal, former U.S. assistant surgeon general and chair of the Global Health Program at the Meridian International Center, from an article on the state of AIDS in the U. S.:
“Each year, more than 2 million people die from this disease. While significant attention has been focused on the newly emergent H1N1 “swine” flu that has resulted in the deaths of 238 people globally, every 15 seconds a person is infected with HIV worldwide and every nine and a half minutes in the United States. A 2008 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 56,000 Americans are infected with HIV annually, a number that is 40 percent higher than previous estimates. Our nation’s youth, ages 13 to 34, composed 41 percent of new HIV infections in 2006. In our nation’s capital, 1 in 20 people are HIV positive. Yet, a recent poll reveals that there is AIDS amnesia in America with only 6 percent of people in the United States naming this disease as a national health problem, down from 44 percent in 1997.” More..
