Today is a day to celebrate progress, and affirm lives, but also to heighten awareness. HIV treatments and prevention have made milestone progress recently, both worldwide and here where I live in the US, (although access is a big concern.) PrEP has become an important addition to the arsenal of prevention methods. There are currently about 34 million people worldwide, including 1.2 million people in the US, living with HIV, and when they have access to care, their lives are now often full and long and active, thanks to medical advances.
But...
*Worldwide there were 2.1 million people newly diagnosed as HIV+ in 2015, and only half of them will have access to treatment
*In 2015... in the US alone, there were over 39,000 people newly diagnosed as HIV+, (almost 25,000 of them gay and bi men),and 11,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS
*An estimated 13% of the people who are HIV positive in the US, and 40% of those worldwide, don't know it.
*People of color and transgender women are at significantly high risk. In the US, with a combination of risk factors and vulnerability, as many as 56% of black/African American transgender women had positive HIV test results in recent medical studies.
*If current diagnosis rates in America were to continue, 1 in 6 gay and bisexual men would be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, including 1 in 2 black/African American gay and bisexual men, 1 in 4 Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men, and 1 in 11 white gay and bisexual men.
HIV has not gone away, and it has not yet been conquered. There are now at least two cases of men contracting strains resistant to PrEP recently verified. We are still fighting this war. Vaccines are on the horizon, with testing underway. Widespread use of PrEP has great promise, but is clearly not infallible. The virus is still an enemy to be defeated. So World AIDS Day is also for recommitting to all the array of efforts aimed at minimizing the impact of HIV in the years to come.
Today is a day to celebrate progress, and affirm lives, but also to heighten awareness. HIV treatments and prevention have made milestone progress recently, both worldwide and here where I live in the US, (although access is a big concern.) PrEP has become an important addition to the arsenal of prevention methods. There are currently about 34 million people worldwide, including 1.2 million people in the US, living with HIV, and when they have access to care, their lives are now often full and long and active, thanks to medical advances.
But...
*Worldwide there were 2.1 million people newly diagnosed as HIV+ in 2015, and only half of them will have access to treatment
*In 2015... in the US alone, there were over 39,000 people newly diagnosed as HIV+, (almost 25,000 of them gay and bi men),and 11,000 people were diagnosed with AIDS
*An estimated 13% of the people who are HIV positive in the US, and 40% of those worldwide, don't know it.
*People of color and transgender women are at significantly high risk. In the US, with a combination of risk factors and vulnerability, as many as 56% of black/African American transgender women had positive HIV test results in recent medical studies.
*If current diagnosis rates in America were to continue, 1 in 6 gay and bisexual men would be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, including 1 in 2 black/African American gay and bisexual men, 1 in 4 Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men, and 1 in 11 white gay and bisexual men.
HIV has not gone away, and it has not yet been conquered. There are now at least two cases of men contracting strains resistant to PrEP recently verified. We are still fighting this war. Vaccines are on the horizon, with testing underway. Widespread use of PrEP has great promise, but is clearly not infallible. The virus is still an enemy to be defeated. So World AIDS Day is also for recommitting to all the array of efforts aimed at minimizing the impact of HIV in the years to come.