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HIV Increasing Among Michigan Teenagers

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Press Release, Michigan Department of Community Health, November 30, 2009

Contact: James McCurtis, Jr.
(517) 241-2112
Agency: Community Health
November 30, 2009

As World AIDS Day approaches on Tuesday, Dec. 1, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) has announced the fourth consecutive year that Michigan is experiencing significant increases in HIV among teenagers. This is a trend that is occurring nationally as well. Click here for a list of World AIDS Day activities in Michigan

The rate of new diagnoses among 13 to 19 year olds in Michigan more than doubled between 2003 and 2007 (from 3.2 to 7.3 cases per 100,000). The rate among those aged 20 to 24 years old at diagnosis was level following three previous years of increases. Of the 13 to 19 year olds diagnosed with HIV/AIDS between 2003 and 2007, 85 percent are African American and almost two thirds (62 percent) are African-American males having sex with males.

“We cannot afford to become complacent with HIV and AIDS in Michigan,” said MDCH Director Janet Olszewski. “Because of the availability of medicines to treat this illness, many individuals believe AIDS is something of the past, but it is still a public health threat that we need to double our efforts to eliminate. In particular, we need to increase prevention efforts among youth and specifically tailor these programs to those at highest risk.”

HIV/AIDS continues to disproportionately affect the state’s African-American males. There were significant increases in rates of new diagnoses among black males whereas the rate among white males decreased. African Americans make up 14 percent of the state’s population, but accounted for 60 percent of all cases of HIV/AIDS diagnosed in 2007 with a rate more than ten times higher than that among whites (37.6 vs 3.5 cases per 100,000).

“These trends underscore the importance of continuing to ensure that there are a range of options for Michigan’s residents to be tested and to learn their HIV status, including highly targeted programs for MSM and African-American communities,” said Amna Osman, director for the MDCH Division of Health, Wellness and Disease Control. “Early diagnosis is critical to helping those who are found to be HIV infected live healthier and longer lives through proper treatment.”

“The rise in HIV infection among adolescents and young adults makes two things very clear,” said Dr. Elizabeth Secord, medical director of the Horizons Project at Children’s Hospital of Michigan. “First, we need to do a better job educating and influencing adolescents about HIV prevention, that is, about safe and responsible sex. Second, we need to bring testing to the young people who are at risk so that they can get treatment if needed. At a time when federal funds are decreasing for these efforts, we need the help of not just the medical community, but also the community at large. Tolerance, education and community awareness are the best tools we have.”

MDCH continues to focus its prevention resources on those communities that HIV and AIDS have had the greatest impact. MDCH provides more than $2 million in federal funding to support highly targeted, community-based HIV prevention services, including testing and health education/risk reduction services. In 2008, 40 percent of the HIV tests performed in public sites were for individuals under the age of 24. Twenty six percent of all individuals receiving health education/risk reduction services were under the age of 25. Twenty percent of all individuals receiving health education/risk reduction services were African American MSM.

MDCH also receives funds from the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) under the Minority AIDS Initiative, to link persons with HIV/AIDS to essential medical services and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. This program, Youth Link, focuses on provision of outreach efforts targeting African-American youth living with HIV/AIDS in Detroit.

“This data make us painfully aware of the impact of HIV/AIDS on our youth and our community as a whole,” said Andrea Roberson, Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) HIV/AIDS Programs Director. “If we hope to positively impact the present and future generations, we must develop innovative strategies, for example using social networks, to decrease stigma while updating our prevention education services to better reach our youth. We have established partnerships with our school system and youth agencies.”

DHWP’s Counseling, Testing and Referral Unit provides free HIV testing with extended hours to make testing more readily available. DHWP’s Prevention, Education and Training (P.E.T.) and Mobile Teams offer programs specifically targeted to youth to address the urgency of this epidemic. Testing is available at Herman Kiefer Health Complex Monday—Thursday 7am-7pm and Fridays 7 a.m.-5:30pm. For more information contact (313) 876-0756.

HIV trends among injecting drug users are showing significant declines, an average of 9 percent per year between 2003 and 2007, (78 to 59 cases). Men who have sex with men (MSM) of all races and ethnicities continue to lead the epidemic in Michigan.

Information on HIV/AIDS in Michigan can be found on the MDCH HIV Web site at http://www.michigan.gov/hivstd.

Original article

(Posted on December 4, 2009)

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Comments

1 — Question Diversity wrote at 6:03 PM on December 4:

This is why AIDS infection rates are going up, because it’s no longer a death sentence, and can be held off with the right drug cocktail which white taxpayers will fund. Therefore, any inhibitions that blacks might have had during the time when people feared AIDS (and they were few) are now gone.

2 — Robert wrote at 6:49 PM on December 4:

from the article - “HIV/AIDS continues to disproportionately affect the state’s African-American males.”

They should just be honest about it and just say that black males are disproportionately effected by the poor choices they freely make. Unprotected sex is just one of the many poor choices black males all too often make.

from the article - “This data make us painfully aware of the impact of HIV/AIDS on our youth and our community as a whole,” said Andrea Roberson, Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) HIV/AIDS Programs Director. “If we hope to positively impact the present and future generations, we must develop innovative strategies…”

Keep dreaming for there are no innovative strategies that can protect people from themselves who knowingly and willingly engage in self destructive unintelligent behaviors.

3 — Question Diversity wrote at 8:59 PM on December 4:

A few years ago, a certain large nationally noted med school in St. Louis opened up a “walk in” center for people ages 13 to 24 to get medical care for their STDs (including AIDS) and other social support services:

http://thespot.wustl.edu/

The local TV news covered its opening, and they showed film of a STD/HIV specialist with said med school saying that “St. Louis’s teens lead the way in syphillis and gonhorrea.” I always thought “leading the way” conjured up images of pioneers pushing back the frontier against hostile Indians, or something inventive or innovative. I guess it means something different in St. Louis’s ‘hoods.

It also said that this place was one of the very first of its kind. Meaning that every major black city will soon get one.

4 — Madison Grant wrote at 9:29 PM on December 4:

85% of the AIDS cases involve blacks and 2/3rds constitute gay black men!

Another reason why prisons should be segregated; to contain STDs. And if it’s deemed too costly to have separate penitentiaries for every ethnic group they should at least have a separate system for blacks and another for everyone else.

5 — john wrote at 9:42 PM on December 4:

Yet another shocker, and doubtless another relentless search for the “root causes.”

Well, how about these root causes: promiscuity, recklesslness, lack of self-control, irresponsibility, and just plain stupidity.

But of course that’s too simple. Societal “root causes” are always subtle, convoluted, complex, and discernible to no one but trained, relentlessly schooled, and highly indoctrinated (but nonetheless incredibly obtuse) sociologists.

The rest of us just don’t get it.

6 — Sissy White wrote at 10:39 PM on December 4:

I always believe the statistics are skewed.

85% black?

Anyone who remotely looks White will be classified as White (no matter how much they stick out at the American Renaissance conference), add Yellows, Hispanics etc….

…perhaps 95% of AIDS cases are non-White.

7 — olewhitelady wrote at 1:02 PM on December 5:

A look at any statistics, anywhere in the world, will show you that whereever there are blacks, they have high incidences of every STD in the book. In the U.S. some of those infected with readily cured diseases like chlamydia are apparently too trifling or self-hating to even walk into a clinic and get an Rx for antibiotics. Everybody in this country already knows what causes STD’s and how to prevent them; the do-gooders are wasting time talking about enlightening people who won’t listen. The day will probably come when the related viruses and bacteria mutate into incurable ailments, and then nature will cull out the weak, just like it always does.

8 — Blaak Obongo wrote at 1:37 PM on December 5:

And how many of those black AIDS carriers will be passing on their infections to White girls, made vulnerable by governmedia race-mixing propaganda?

9 — Bon, From the Land of Babble wrote at 2:30 PM on December 6:

QD writes:

“…This is why AIDS infection rates are going up, because it’s no longer a death sentence, and can be held off with the right drug cocktail which white taxpayers will fund…”

At an AIDS seminar I attended (according to the government and the textbooks, AIDS is an ‘equal opportunity killer’ and everyone is at ‘grave risk’ of contracting it), the researcher stated that HIV positive females are reproducing at will because ‘AZT’ or other First World drugs will save them and their progeny. Magic Johnson is their hero.

Also, the president announced on October 30, 2009, the elimination of the HIV entry ban. Destitute, desperate HIV positive immigrants will come for the ‘free’ NWO health plan—you know, the plan you are mandated to join and forced to pay for with threat of hard prison time if you refuse—the same plan the politicians don’t have to join as they have their own Cadillac Health Plan, separate from the government’s plan that they’re forcing on you. Got that?

The ‘hope’ and ‘change’ is working out just as obama’s handlers planned—stripping Whites of their wealth and moving the US toward an Authoritarian, All-Powerful, Centralized Government.

Bon

10 — Finn McCool wrote at 5:43 PM on December 7:

In Upper Michigan the HIV rate is next to zero. I wonder why?

11 — SKIP wrote at 9:17 AM on December 8:

In Upper Michigan the HIV rate is next to zero. I wonder why?

Would you mean MICHIGANISTAN where all the black muslims are taking over the entire state?

12 — Michael C. Scott wrote at 12:41 PM on December 10:

AIDS is an “equal-opportunity killer” and everyone is at “grave risk” of contracting it? Hmmmm. Let’s see. I’m married and my wife and I are monomagous. The risk of either of us catching the disease would therefore seem as vanishingly small as either of us - non-smokers - developing lung cancer. It sounds as if the “experts” at the seminar you went to do not really understand how HIV spreads, Bon.

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