E-Paper
Black women more likely to be infected with AIDS in US
A black woman is 23 times more prone to AIDS due to higher rate of HIV among blacks, says a study.
A black woman in the United States is 23 times more likely to be infected with AIDS than the white woman and black women accounted for 71.8 per cent of new HIV cases in women from 1999 to 2002, a government study of 29 states has indicated.
Though the number of new cases of HIV among black women have been stable in past few years, the number of those who have been infected through heterosexual sex has risen, the study said.
In 2001, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit group focusing on health issues, an estimated 67 per cent of black women with AIDS contracted the virus through heterosexual sex, compared with 58 per cent four years earlier. Black women accounted for half of all HIV infections acquired through heterosexual sex, in men or women, from 1999 to 2002, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The 'New York Times' quoted researchers as saying though heterosexual transmission has risen for all women, a black woman has a greater chance of coming into contact with the virus when she has sex with another black person because, compared with the general population, there is a higher rate of HIV among black Americans.
Recent studies suggest that 30 per cent of all black bisexual men may be infected with HIV, and up to 90 per cent of those men do not know they are infected.
Researchers for the Centres for Disease Control have referred to these men as a "bridge" to infection from gay men to heterosexual women, the Times said.
In February, health officials identified a fast-spreading outbreak of infections among 84 men, primarily black students at 37 colleges in North Carolina. The majority were infected through sex with other men, but a third reported that they had had sex with men and women.
"What we learned from the research we did with college men here is the potential for HIV to enter the mainstream population of the black community," Dr Peter Leone, medical director of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services HIV prevention unit and a co-author of a study of the 84 men, was quoted by the paper as saying.
"This is a big change and may be a defining moment," Dr Leone added. "I don't mean to sound like Chicken Little, but if we don't react to this very quickly and aggressively, it'll be like the 80's all over again. Instead of gay white men, though, we'll be dealing with large numbers of young black men and their female partners."
