A Moment for AIDS in America

In the 17th century as a plague spread through Europe people learned of its existence only through its death toll, and as cities succumbed, awareness came too late. It arrived that way in London, in the middle of the century, as author Daniel Defoe described 40 years later:

We had no such thing as printed News Papers in those Days, to spread Rumours and Reports of Things; and to improve them by the Invention of Men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the Letters of Merchants, and others, who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by Word of Mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole Nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true Account of it, and several Counsels were held about Ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was, that this Rumour died off again, and People began to forget it . . .”  Journal of The Plague Year, 1722

We have newspapers now, and other inventions to spread word, and somehow they have failed during the plague of our time to keep people from forgetting it.

This is the state of the AIDS epidemic in America in the first decade of the 21rst century. Although its toll is greatest here among young people, if you go to high schools you will find young people who don’t know this country has more men, women and children living with the virus that leads to AIDS than any other country in the industrialized world.  You will find untested, unproven, and even methods proven to be ineffective to alert people to the epidemic where any efforts are funded at all.

 And although federal disease trackers have known for nearly a year that the rate of new cases each year is 40 percent higher than previously thought, with every year bringing an estimated 56,000 new infections, that news was not spread until earlier this month.

 The new numbers, tragic in their individual ramifications, were presented to Intenational AIDS Conference attendees in Mexico city as something bordering on good news, in all their power to prompt change:

“This is an important time for us in the United States.  It is a moment in time,” Dr. Kevin Fenton, who heads the HIV division of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control said at a conference session. “There has been a wonderful of confluence of focus, not only on the domestic epidemic in the United States, but the global leadership that the U.S. is providing in HIV prevention.”

He went on to say the numbers should make listeners “pause and think about what they are saying to us in the United States, about where we need to be going with ending this epidemic within our lifetimes.”

The numbers were the  result of an improved technology that allowed data collectors to better estimate the time transmissions had occurred. The significance of the new numbers, aside from their magnitude, and the need they showed for more better education and prevention efforts, was that they would highlight as well where those efforts need to be made.

Three weeks did not pass though, before that news was followed by word that the CDC has discontinued efforts to collect those numbers in eight of the 34 cities and states where those efforts had just yielded the new more accurate picture of the American epidemic, including in  Georgia, home to the eighth highest rate of AIDS in the nation.

And so we are left to wonder, once again, where we need to be going with ending this epidemic within our lifetimes.