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Half of gay black men in
U.S. likely to be diagnosed with HIV, CDC says
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[February 25, 2016]
By Sebastien Malo
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Half of all black gay and
bisexual men in the United States are projected to be diagnosed with
HIV, a government study shows, in a ratio parallel to the prevalence of
the virus among such men in developing nations such as Mauritania and
Senegal.
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 Black men who have sex with men are 250 times more likely as
heterosexual U.S. men overall to be diagnosed with the virus,
according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC).
Among Latino gay and bisexual men, one in four are projected to get
HIV in their lifetime, and the chances of white gay and bisexual men
getting HIV is one in 11, said the report released this week.
The figures are a reminder that efforts need to be made to boost HIV
and AIDS prevention, CDC officials said.
"Hundreds of thousands of people will be diagnosed in their lifetime
if we don't scale up efforts now," said Jonathan Mermin, director of
the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and
Tuberculosis Prevention.
The projections for gay black men in the United States evoke the
rates of HIV and AIDS in African nations such as Mauritania, where
some 44 percent of gay and bisexual men had HIV in 2014, according
to the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
The same year in Senegal, nearly 42 percent of gay and bisexual men
had the virus, UNAIDS said.
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In the United States, more than 1.2 million people have HIV,
according to CDC data. Worldwide, some 36.9 million people were
living with HIV at the end of 2014, according to UNAIDS.
Globally, HIV infections have been falling since AIDS-related deaths
peaked in 2004.
(Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please
credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson
Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking,
corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
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broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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