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    Senior Member FedUpinFarmersBranch's Avatar
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    AIDS rate swelling among Hispanics

    AIDS rate swelling among Hispanics

    By CECI CONNOLLY, Washington Post
    First published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008

    number of cases amounts to public health crisis



    SAN YSIDRO, Calif. -- AIDS rates in the nation's Latino community are increasing and, with little notice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public health crisis.

    Though Hispanics comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population, they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federal officials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hispanics in Washington, D.C., have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country.

    So far, the toll of AIDS in the nation's largest and fastest growing minority population has mostly been overshadowed by the epidemic among African-Americans and gay white men. Yet in major U.S. cities, as many as 1 in 4 gay Hispanic men have HIV.

    Blacks still have the highest HIV rates in the country, but language difficulties, cultural barriers and legal status make the threat in the Hispanic community unique. For those who arrived illegally, fear of arrest and deportation is a daunting obstacle to seeking diagnosis and treatment.

    "Officials need to stop downplaying or ignoring what's happening among Latinos," said Oscar De La O, president of Bienestar, a Latino service organization. "We are at the center of the storm."

    Even with the United States embroiled in a fierce debate over immigration policy, the problem of AIDS in Latinos had received scant attention from political and public health officials. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where only two of 17 approved HIV programs target Hispanic Americans, officials have added Spanish-language hot lines, confidential testing sites and other initiatives aimed at filling the gap.

    "You combine the economic pressures, loneliness and immigration worries, and it pushes these individuals to be a hidden population," said Frank Galvan, of the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

    The consequences, however, go well beyond the Hispanic community. If the United States does not begin to "make a dent" in the swelling crisis of HIV among Hispanics, Galvan said, "it will continue to spread to other populations."



    http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story. ... nkFrom=RSS
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