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National conference calls for redoubling anti-AIDS efforts
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9-6-99 Atlanta. AIDS researchers who met last week in Atlanta at the nation's first prevention-based conference had good news and bad news. The good news: Death rates from AIDS in the United States slowed again in 1998. The bad news: The rate of deaths is no longer falling as rapidly as it did in 1996-97 following the introduction of powerful combination-drug therapies. And the other bad news: New HIV infections are gaining ground among young gay men and heterosexual women, particularly minorities. "The message is, HIV prevention is more important now than ever before," said Katheryn Bina, HIV specialist for the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which led the Atlanta conference. Nationwide, AIDS deaths dropped 42 percent from 1996 to 1997, but only 20 percent from 1997 to 1998, the CDC reported. Although last year's total of 17,047 deaths is much lower than at the peak of the epidemic in the 1980s, the slowing rate of decline indicates more aggressive prevention efforts are needed, Bina said. Prevention is critically needed to slow the rate of new infections in minority communities, Bina added. One study presented at the conference, a six-city survey of gay men between the ages of 15 and 22, found an overall HIV infection rate of 7 percent and a 14 percent rate among blacks. "The numbers coming out of Atlanta definitely confirm what we've known for the last year," said Jed Kenslea, community relations director for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. "White gay men know the risks [of unsafe sex], but that is not as true in the black and Latino communities, for either gays or heterosexuals." In the quest for solutions, the foundation is considering opening a thrift shop in a predominantly black Los Angeles neighborhood where customers can get HIV testing. The shop might help sidestep the AIDS stigma that has kept patients from visiting HIV clinics in many minority communities, Kenslea said.
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