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Guess what? AIDS may be a global problem, but it still happens here in the United States, too. And if you're person of color, it happens a whole lot. African Americans may represent 12 percent of the total U.S. population, but we were estimated to account for 50 percent of the HIV and AIDS cases diagnosed among adults in 2003.
Think that's bad? Well, if you're a woman of color it gets even worse: black women account for nearly 66% of HIV cases amongst women despite being only 12% of the US population of females.
Stunned? Me too. Want more information about the realities of the disease in the US, and how some pretty remarkable young African Americans are dealing with the epidemic? Check out this program on NPR featuring super-fly journalist Michel Martin. Her guests have a lot to share, and may just convince you that when it comes to HIV, it's not just folks in the third world who are continuing to suffer.
If it's not enough that the US lures migrant workers here for little pay and no insurance, and then kicks them out unceremoniously whenever "immigration" becomes a hot button issue, here's news of an even worse gift we're giving the folks who silently make our economy go 'round: increasing numbers of migrant workers are being infected with HIV and then taking it home--back to rural communities in Mexico where lack of resources, transportation and education make it a mind-numbingly difficult plague to fight.
It's pretty easy to hear how conservatives could spin this in favor of greater immigration reform ("Look! They're spreading AIDS in their own country--and presumably in ours too!"), but for the more sane among us, this offers yet another reason that a different kind of reform is necessary: one that provides not only education but opportunity to the poorest among us. For example, the opportunity to not have to leave ones family behind for months at a time to search out work; or the opportunity to not have to prostitute oneself to pay the bills. Or the opportunity to access health care when you need it, and condoms whether you think you need them or not.
Of course all this would necessitate that America start thinking of itself as a true member of the world community--not just some big brother figure that need not care what happens to our brothers and sisters to the south. My fear is that the only way we'll get that logic is when the great ills of the world come knocking on every single American's door. Seems a little moronic for a country that considers itself the greatest nation in the world, doesn't it?
Did you know that each day, more than 13,000 people across the globe are newly infected with HIV? Or that here in the US, HIV is the largest killer of African-American women ages 25-34? Or that the rates among all US women have skyrocketed in the last 20 years, from 8% of total infections in 1985 to more than 27% today?
Well, if you didn't know, now you do. And, as we say in the African-American tradition, when you know better, you do better. So today, in honor of National HIV Testing Day, go out there and do better. Get tested. Tell your friends to do the same. Donate time or money to one of the many good organizations out there that are doing work on behalf of people with AIDS. And educate yourself: check out this piece from the National Women and AIDS Collective to learn more about the ways in which women are left out of the picture when it comes to funding the war on HIV.
Via Salon's Broadsheet, news today of a report on AIDS in Africa that finds that "greater social and economic inequality between the sexes directly correlate[s] to the HIV risk faced by African women."
What does that mean? Essentially, that when women are poor, their incidence of AIDS infection rises. And the inverse also seems to be true: greater equality means less risk for women of becoming infected with HIV.
It's not rocket science, folks: give women a chance to take care of themselves and they don't have to turn to practices like sex work to keep their families from starving. And here's the little mantra I've come up with to make the point: End Inequality, End AIDS. Genius, no?
Guess what? AIDS may be a global problem, but it still happens here in the United States, too. And if you're person of color, it happens a whole lot. African Americans may represent 12 percent of the total U.S. population, but we were estimated to account for 50 percent of the HIV and AIDS cases diagnosed among adults in 2003.
