President Obama will announce that his national AIDS strategy Tuesday, following a 15-month study and “listening” tour was conducted by the Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control Office of National AIDS Policy.
According to the study, roughly 56,000 Americans contract AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome – each year. AIDS is the final stage of the disease caused by the human immunodefiency virus (HIV) and “more than 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV,” the report said.
While the number of AIDS-related deaths has declined and the number of new infections remains static, the number of Americans living with H.I.V. is growing.
Thus, the report said “the administration will redirect money to areas with the greatest need and population groups at greatest risk, including gay and bisexual men and African-Americans. The federal government now spends more than $19 billion a year on domestic AIDS programs.
“For years, gay activists told us that HIV was not a gay disease — that everybody was at risk,” said Jeff Johnston, a CitizenLink issues analyst. “Now, nearly 30 years into the epidemic, there is finally a level of tacit admission that the HIV epidemic in the United States is largely fueled by men who have sex with men.”
Johnston also notes that the moral component in the battle against HIV is largely ignored.
“If we truly care about gay and bisexual men, we must emphasize that the only way to stop the spread of HIV is to completely abstain from the risky sexual behaviors that cause transmission of not only this virus — but other sexually transmitted infections as well,” he said.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Centers for Disease Control on HIV/AIDS.
Read the Office of National AIDS Policy Report.
What the Medical Institute says about HIV/AIDS.
Read the New York Times article, “Obama to Outline Plan to Cut HIV Infections.”
Read “AIDS Programs Help Bureaucrats, Not Vicitms,” by Rob Schwarzwalder, senior vice president of the Family Research Council, and served in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services. Appeared in The Washington Times on February 3, 2010.
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