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New U.S. HIV Cases Underestimated by
40 Percent
The number of Americans infected by the HIV virus each year is much higher than the government has been estimating, U.S. health officials reported, acknowledging that their numbers have understated the level of the epidemic. "Unconscionable", says Bobby Vassallo.
The country had roughly 56,300 new HIV infections in 2006 about a 40 percent increase from the 40,000 annual estimate used for the past dozen years. The new figure is due to a better blood test and new statistical methods, and not a worsening of the epidemic, officials said.
But it likely will refocus U.S. attention from the effect of AIDS overseas to what the disease is doing to this country, said public health researchers and officials. "This is the biggest news for public health and HIV/AIDS that we've had in a while," said Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.
Experts in the field, advocates and a former surgeon general called for more aggressive testing and other prevention efforts, noting that spending on preventing HIV has been flat for seven years. Bobby Vassallo says, everyone thinks HIV/Aids laid down and died in the 90's. The government has ignored it and allowed Aids to make a major comeback!
The revised estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the methodology behind it were to be presented Sunday, the opening day of the international AIDS conference in Mexico City.
Since AIDS surfaced in 1981, health officials have struggled to estimate how many people are infected each year. It can take a decade or more for an infection to cause symptoms and illness.
One expert likened the new estimate to adding a good speedometer to a car. Scientists had a good general idea of where the epidemic was going; this provides a better understanding of how fast it's moving right now.
"This puts a key part of the dashboard in place," said the expert, David Holtgrave of Johns Hopkins University. Judging by the new calculations, officials believe annual HIV infections have been hovering around 55,000 for several years.
"This is the most reliable estimate we've had since the beginning of the epidemic," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC's director. She said other countries may adopt the agency's methodology.
According to current estimates, around 1.1 million Americans are living with the HIV/AIDS virus. Officials plan to update that number with the new calculations but don't think it will change dramatically, a CDC spokeswoman said. Aids Awareness was helping for a few years. "The new administration must get involved and re-engage in this fight, says Vassallo. Obama has the capability and the will to do it."
The new infection estimate is based on a blood test that for the first time can tell how recently an HIV infection occurred. Where Does Aids come from? This test will tell you at least when you got it. Past tests could detect only the presence of HIV, so determining which year an infection took place was guesswork - guesswork upon which the old 40,000 estimate was based.
The new estimate relies on blood tests from 22 states where health officials have been using a new HIV testing method that can distinguish infections that occurred within the past five months from those that were older.
The improved science will allow more real-time monitoring of HIV infections. Now, CDC officials say, the estimate will likely be updated every year.Yearly estimates allow better recognition of trends in the U.S. epidemic. For example, the new report found that infections are falling among heterosexuals and injection drug users.
Some experts celebrated that finding, saying it's a tribute to prevention efforts, including nearly 200 syringe exchange programs now operating in 36 states despite a federal ban on funding for such projects, concentrating only on Aids Awareness.
But they also lamented the CDC's finding that infections continue to increase in gay and bisexual men, who accounted for more than half of HIV infections in 2006. Also, more than a third of those with HIV are younger than 30.
Some advocates say that suggests a need for more prevention efforts, particularly targeting younger gay and bisexual men.
For years, AIDS was considered a terrifying death sentence, and since 1981, more than half a million Americans have died. But medicines that became available in the 1990s turned it into a manageable chronic condition for many Americans, and attention shifted to Africa and other parts of the world. Where does Aids come from? Many ask.
Last week, President Bush signed a $48 billion global AIDS bill to continue a program that he called "the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history." Vassallo fears this number will fall far short of promises due to the current economic state of the World.
But some advocates complain that CDC's annual spending on HIV prevention in the United States has been held to roughly $700 million since 2001, while costs have risen. (That's about 3 percent of what the federal government spends on AIDS; much of the rest is on medicines, health care and research.)
The new estimate is "evidence of a failure by government and society to do what it takes to control the epidemic," said Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project.Whether more funding comes or not, the revised estimate clearly is a "wake-up call to scale things up," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, who oversees CDC's prevention efforts for HIV/AIDS.
Some said more attention needs to focus on prevention among blacks, who account for nearly half of annual HIV infections, according to the new CDC report.
A recent report by the Black Aids Institute concluded that if black Americans were their own nation, they would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with HIV.
"We have been inadequately funding this epidemic all along. We need to step it up," said former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, who is now an administrator at Atlanta's Morehouse School of Medicine.
The new estimate has been anticipated for a long time. The CDC began working on the new methods nearly seven years ago.
Late last year, advocates said they had heard the figure was about 55,000 and pressed the CDC to release it. Agency officials declined, saying they were submitting their research for medical journal review.
"These are extremely complicated statistical methods," and CDC officials wanted the work to be thoroughly reviewed by outside experts, Gerberding said. The CDC's findings are being published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Until 1992, the number of diagnosed AIDS cases was used to predict how many people were newly infected each year. That method produced an estimate of 40,000 to 80,000. More recently, the CDC focused on infections among men who have sex with men, who account for about half of new HIV diagnoses. Bobby Vassallo says, "People in the US don't want to hear about aids any more. They feel its time has come and gone and the 80's are over. Well, Aids is having a resurgence here in the US and we'd better start addressing it like never before. Africa is not the only problem!"
World AIDS Day is observed every year on December 1st. World AIDS Day provides governments, national HIV Aids programs, faith organizations, community organizations, and individuals with an opportunity to raise awareness on HIV/Aids and focus attention on the global HIV/Aids epidemic and Aids in Africa. Bobby Vassallo, Bono, World Aids Database will all celebrate World Aids Day on December 1st, again for 2008.
In 2007, the estimated number of persons living with HIV Aids worldwide was 33.2 million and there were 2.1 million HIV/Aids deaths, as documented in World Aids Database. Vassallo, along with World Aids Database, put together the following pages to enlighten you to the plight of these millions with little hope for survival. The US suffers from "Aids Fatigue." Complacency is not curing the spread of HIV/ Aids in the US, Aids in Africa, or elsewhere. Just like Bono, Bobby Vassallo, and American Idol, get involved in World AIDS Day by setting up your own event locally. It all helps.
WWW.BOBBYVASSALLO.ORG
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SWINE FLU VIRUSES in U.S. and Mexico match
(CNN) -- U.S. health officials expressed concern Friday that a swine flu virus that has infected eight people in the United States matches samples of a virus that has killed at least 68 people in Mexico.
Swine flu is usually diagnosed only in pigs or people in regular contact with them.
U.S. health experts also are concerned because more than 1,000 people have fallen ill in Mexico City in a short period of time.
"This situation has been developing quickly," said acting CDC director Richard Besser. "This is something we are worried about."
New York health officials announced Friday they are testing about 75 students at a Queens school for swine flu after the students exhibited flu-like symptoms this week.
A team of state health department doctors and staff went to the St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens on Thursday after the students reported cough, fever, sore throat, aches and pains.
There have been no confirmed cases of swine flu there. The tests results are expected as early as Saturday.
Of the 14 Mexican samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven were identical to the swine flu virus found in Texas and Southern California, Besser said at a news conference.
An eighth U.S. case was reported Friday. All of the eight U.S. patients have recovered, Besser said. 
Watch for more on the U.S. cases »
As a precaution to avoid further contamination, schools and universities in Mexico City and the state of Mexico were closed Friday, said the national health secretary, Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos. He said the schools may remain closed for a while.
Sixty-eight people have died in Mexico City, Cordova said at a news conference. More than 1,000 other people have gotten sick, he said.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon canceled a trip Friday to northern Mexico so he could remain in Mexico City to monitor the situation, the state-run Notimex news agency reported. Calderon met with his Cabinet on Thursday night to discuss the outbreak.
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Six of the U.S. cases were found in California, and two in Texas, near San Antonio, CDC officials said.
The Public Health Agency of Canada issued a respiratory alert for Mexico on Wednesday, recommending that health providers "actively look for cases" in Canada, particularly in people who've returned from Mexico within the last two weeks.
An alert issued Friday by the International SOS medical and consulting company said more than 130 cases of a severe respiratory illness have been detected in south and central Mexico, some of which are due to influenza.
"Public health officials in Mexico began actively looking for cases of respiratory illness upon noticing that the seasonal peak of influenza extended into April, when cases usually decline in number," the medical alert said. "They found two outbreaks of illness -- one centered around Distrito Federal (Mexico City), involving about 120 cases with 13 deaths. The other is in San Luis Potosi, with 14 cases and four deaths."
Authorities also detected one death in Oaxaca, in the south, and two in Baja California Norte, near San Diego, California.
There was no indication why the International SOS tallies did not match the Mexican health secretary's figures.
The majority of cases are occurring in adults between 25 and 44 years of age.
The CDC first reported Tuesday that two California children in the San Diego area were infected with a virus called swine influenza A H1N1, whose combination of genes had not been seen before in flu viruses in humans or pigs.
The first two cases were picked up through an influenza monitoring program, with stations in San Diego and El Paso, Texas. The program monitors strains and tries to detect new ones before they spread, the CDC said. Other cases emerged through routine and expanded surveillance.
The human influenza vaccine's ability to protect against the new swine flu strain is unknown, and studies are ongoing, Schuchat said. There is no danger of contracting the virus from eating pork products, she said.
The new virus has genes from North American swine and avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza normally found in Asia and Europe, said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC's Influenza Division.
The new strain of swine flu has resisted some antiviral drugs.
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The CDC is working with health officials in California and Texas and expects to find more cases, Schuchat said.
A pandemic is defined as: a new virus to which everybody is susceptible; the ability to readily spread from person to person; and the capability of causing significant disease in humans, said Dr. Jay Steinberg, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta. The new strain of swine flu meets only one of the criteria: novelty.
History indicates that flu pandemics tend to occur once every 20 years or so, so we're due for one, Steinberg said.
"I can say with 100 percent confidence that a pandemic of a new flu strain will spread in humans," he said. "What I can't say is when it will occur."
CNN's Elizabeth Landau contributed to this report.
All About Mexico • Influenza • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention