-
- SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco health authorities
are reporting a sharp jump in new HIV infections, marking the start of
what many doctors fear is a dangerous new stage in America's AIDS epidemic.
-
- City health officials estimate that, after years of relative
stability thanks to aggressive prevention programmes, safer-sex publicity
and new drug treatments, new HIV infections in San Francisco doubled to
900 in the past year.
-
- "We see in San Francisco what is going to happen
next in the epidemic. We saw the first AIDS infection, and now we're seeing
the first rise in new infections," Dr. Thomas Coates, director of
the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California-San Francisco,
said Friday. "This should sound a warning bell for the rest of the
country."
-
- Health officials blame the rise in part on the success
of earlier AIDS prevention and treatment efforts, which have combined to
make the disease seem less threatening for many gay men.
-
- Doctors said the San Francisco data, derived from city
clinics that provide anonymous testing for the virus which causes AIDS,
was the first to illustrate a direct link between new HIV infections and
an increase in risky behaviour which experts have tracked over the past
five years.
-
- San Francisco, known around the world as a gay capital,
became one of the first centres of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s,
when as many as half the gay men in the city were believed to be infected
with HIV. Since 1981, more than 18,000 San Franciscans have died of AIDS.
-
- Quick action by the city's gay community and public health
officials also made San Francisco a model for the fight against AIDS, pushing
new HIV infections down from an estimated high of 6,000 in 1982 to a fairly
steady 500 per year throughout most of the 1990s.
-
- The estimated total for 2000, however, is between 800
and 900, with gay men accounting for about 575 of the new HIV infections,
according to Dr. Willi McFarland of the city's Department of Public Health.
-
- More alarming still, the percentage of HIV positive cases
turning up at anonymous testing centres nearly tripled between 1997 and
1999 to reach 3.7 percent -- a level comparable to some areas of sub-Saharan
Africa.
-
- The testing centres are seen as an early warning system
for the rest of the city because they serve a higher-risk clientele than
in the general population.
-
- Doctors say the soaring rate of HIV infection, while
alarming, is no surprise. They have tracked a similar rise in risky behaviour
as new AIDS drugs have made the disease seem less threatening.
-
- The proportion of gay men in San Francisco who reported
always using a condom during sex fell from 70 percent in 1994 to 54 percent
in 1999, and the proportion who said they had unprotected anal sex with
more than one partner grew from 23 percent in 1994 to 43 percent in 1999,
health officials said.
-
- Rates of rectal gonorrhea in the city have risen from
20 per 100,000 in 1994 to 45 per 100,000 in 1999.
-
- Health policy officials said Friday that the data clearly
illustrated the need for continued outreach and AIDS prevention efforts
among gay men in San Francisco -- although some cautioned that the city's
data could not necessarily be interpreted as marking the future course
of the AIDS epidemic in other U.S. cities.
-
- "The statistics very clearly point to a well-defined
target population, and a particular behavioural pattern. This is a trend
that can certainly be contained," said Rene Durazzo, director of programmes
at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
-
- Unlike many other U.S. cities, San Francisco has not
seen a notable rise in HIV infections among women, and its needle-exchange
programme has helped to keep new infections among intravenous drug users
relatively low, Durazzo said.
-
- "People have to look at their own individual epidemics
and do their homework about what is going on in their own cities,"
Durazzo said. "But what this tell us is that this epidemic is far
from over, and it is not time to shift resources elsewhere. Otherwise,
we are setting ourselves up for another wave of infections, and huge loss
and death."
-
-
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|