Speaking Friday at a forum held at a West Oakland community center, CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said the effort to prevent HIV among African Americans, especially gay black men, needs more funding.
"You have to scale the money to the scope of the problem," Gerberding said.
CDC reports that in 2005 the HIV infection rate among African-American men was seven times higher than the rate among white men, while black women are being infected at a rate 20 times higher than white women. African Americans now make up half of US HIV patients, though the community represents just 13 percent of the population.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), the forum's host, is again asking the federal government to declare a "national public health emergency" in response to these statistics. "We need to make sure not only that resources are increased, but are targeted to where they are needed most," she said.
The Bush administration, which appointed Gerberding to head CDC, is proposing a $1 million cut in CDC's funds for HIV prevention and surveillance, which would reduce the agency's money for the efforts to $691 million in the coming fiscal year. Last year, Gerberding said CDC needed a total of $7.2 billion, but its budget was cut to $5.9 billion.
Several speakers expressed dismay that US domestic HIV prevention funds have remained flat or declined for years, while the Bush administration's spending on AIDS overseas had increased dramatically.
Robert Williams of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies noted that HIV prevention funding in Alameda County, which declared an HIV emergency 10 years ago, has been cut from $1.6 million to $800,000. "If it is, in fact, a state of emergency, then why aren't we acting like it's an emergency?" he asked.
05/10/08
UNITED STATES: Call to Shift HIV Prevention Demographics
Source: San Francisco Chronicle:: Sabin Russell; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention