LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the infection rate in black men was more than six times that in white men, and black women were 15 times more likely to become infected than their white counterparts. How to target interventions to slow the spread of HIV in these affected communities will be a focus of the meeting.

Researchers from the HIV Prevention Trials Network found that the rate of new infection in black gay and bisexual men was 2.8 percent a year, 50 percent higher than in white men who reported having same-sex relations. According to a study of 1,553 men in six U.S. cities for black gay and bisexual men who are 30 years of age or younger, the rate was 5.9 percent a year.

"To say we're not where we want to be is an understatement," Charles Flexner, an infectious disease specialist and clinical pharmacologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore says. "We haven't achieved the goals we want to."

Infection rates were five times higher than government estimates for 2,099 black women in six U.S. cities. The data was similar to that reported in parts of Africa where the disease is considered the most virulent.

Poverty, social stigma in African American communities and lack of access to health care services help propel the epidemic among blacks and other minorities, Carlos del Rio, chairman of global health at Emory University in Atlanta said.

"We have the worst epidemic of any developed country and part of the reason is that some regions of this country are not a developed country anymore," Del Rio said. "The epidemic has changed dramatically and that is something that is not totally appreciated."

In spite of treatment that can stave off the ill effects of the disease, doctors at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta are seeing more young black men in their twenties come in with late stage AIDS.

"I would estimate it has probably gone up by at least 50 percent compared to five years ago," and many of the patients he sees are being diagnosed late in the disease, after symptoms have begun to weaken them, Jeffrey Lennox, chief of infectious disease at Grady Memorial said in a telephone interview.

"The people that are transmitting the virus either don't know that they are infected, or don't know they should be on treatment, or haven't accepted treatment," he said.

Lennox says that one young black man he worked with didn't report for treatment until he had a CD4 count of less than 10 cells per cubic milliliter, compared to a normal level of above 500. These are a type of immune system cells affected by the AIDS virus.

The man by that point had suffered permanent nerve damage, Lennox said. While the virus is now under control thanks to a cocktail of powerful drugs, the man will live the rest of his life in a wheelchair, he said.

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