Today we are Black Blogging To End AIDS

Thank you Yobachi for reminding us.



OK, so I live 30 Minutes away from the nations capitol. So I'm listening to some grim statsics on the radio. No its not stats on how many people are over wieght, or how many kids are dropping out of school, no its not how many black people are being tortured by police through high tech lynching by Laser Guns, no this is a report released just days before World AIDS day. It's a report about the health of one black community. The Black community of Washington, D.C. The Capitol of the United states

Source: voanews.com

In the new report by the government of Washington, D.C., offered some grim statistics. One in 50 people in the nation's capital has AIDS. One in 20 is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The city has the highest HIV infection rate in the nation. City officials are calling it a "modern epidemic."

According to the annual report, 12,428 people reported living with HIV and AIDS in Washington, a city of just under 600,000. The rate of new cases is higher than in cities like New York, Chicago and Detroit.

African Americans constitute 57 percent of the population in Washington, yet 80 percent of those infected are black.

AAPP: Yes, Washington, DC has been gentrified, black folks have been pushed out. It is no longer CC Chocolate City.

Shannon Hader heads the District of Columbia HIV/AIDS Administration, the government agency that published the report. She says the data reveals a complex epidemic involving a diverse range of risk groups. "We have about a third of the infections being transmitted heterosexually, a little less than a third being transmitted among men who have sex with men and probably about 20 percent being transmitted through injection drug use."

Among people who have become infected most recently, heterosexual transmission leads all other risk categories. According to the D.C. report, two-thirds of the newly reported HIV/AIDS cases are among people ages 30 to 49.

Hader says the report gives public health officials a road map that can help them focus the city's response to the epidemic. "They really help us prioritize."

Hader says the report also helps public health officials estimate what services they will need in the future, which, he adds, "actually is a higher volume of services than we have now if we really want to cover this epidemic and do it well."

Hader has a $95 million-budget to do the job, which includes stepping up AIDS awareness and quick HIV-testing programs, and distributing millions of free condoms throughout the city. Over the next several years, Hader expects these and other initiatives will reduce dramatically the rate of new HIV infections, and help Washington, D.C. turn the tide of its AIDS epidemic.

AAPP: AIDS is a big problem in the Nations capitol. And look at how much money is being spent on this problem. $95 million? That's it folks. We spend a billion a day in Iraq for war. What is the Congressional Black Caucus saying or doing? What is the National Association for the "advancement" of Colored People (NAACP) Doing? Jesse, Al, Julian? Enough said!

You get my point.

Today is World AIDS Day. For many black people around the world. The world is not a happy place... It's time that we all stand up ion our our communities to make things happen.

AAPP