WASHINGTON—At a time when the promising practices and the potential of new drugs to arrest the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. are greater than at any other time in the past three decades, recent data released at the International AIDS Conference, July 22-27, show that the most vulnerable people at the epicenter of the disease—African-Americans, especially gay men—are steadily losing ground and their lives in the war against AIDS.
The AIDS crisis among Black men who have sex with men, or MSM, is far from over and not even close to being under control, according to a new report released this week by the Los Angeles-based think tank The Black AIDS Institute. Black MSM account for 1 in 500 Americans, but represent nearly 1 in 4 new HIV infections, according to the report “Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Black Gay Men in America.”
“Black men who have sex with men are engulfed in a raging generalized epidemic,” said Phil Wilson, president of the Institute and an openly gay Black man who has been living with HIV for 32 years. In fact, the report found that the odds of a Black man who has sex with men becoming infected increase from a 1-in-4 chance of infection at 25 years old to a 59.3 percent chance by the time he reaches 40 years old.
“Almost six in every 10 Black gay men in America will be HIV-positive by their 40th birthday,” Wilson told more than 23,000 delegates, policy makers, researchers, government officials and advocates during the speech he delivered July 23 at the conference’s opening plenary session.
Wilson was among this week’s HIV/AIDS experts, scholars and speakers who shared what they see as the best and worst of times in the three-decades-old AIDS battle. They also peered cautiously into a future where a new generation of people will be AIDS free.
The “AIDS-free world” that Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton described during her address here on the first day of the conference would look like this: “Virtually no child anywhere will be born with the virus; as children and teenagers become adults, they will be significantly at lower risk over ever becoming infected than they would be today, no matter where they are living; and, if someone does acquire HIV, they will have access to treatment that helps prevent them from developing AIDS and passing the virus on to others.”
For Black America: Take Ownership of the Epidemic
