AIDS in Black America/ FACT SHEET

AIDS is a crisis in Black America. Blacks are more likely to become infected and more likely to die from HIV.

• The CDC now estimates 56,300 new infections a year, at least 45% are in Black America
• The CDC now estimates that more than 500,000 Black Americans are living with HIV/AIDS, and as many as 26,000 Black Americans become infected each year.
• Black Americans are eight times more likely than White Americans to become newly infected with HIV.
• Blacks are one in eight Americans, but half the people living with HIV in the U.S.
• HIV-positive Blacks in New York City are 2.5 more likely to die of HIV than Whites.
• AIDS remains the leading cause of death among Black women between 25-34 years and the second leading cause of death in Black men between 35-44 years.
• 65% of HIV-infected newborns are Black.
• Black women in the U.S. are 23 times more likely than White women to be diagnosed with AIDS.
• Blacks make up 70% of new HIV diagnoses among teenagers.
• Between 2001 and 2006, the number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses among young Black men who have sex with men (ages 13-24) nearly doubled.
• In New York State prisons, Blacks are six times as likely to have HIV as Whites.
• In a 2006 survey, Black Americans, alone among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., ranked HIV/AIDS as the single most urgent health problem.

• If Black America were a separate country:
  

• its economic, social and health profile would resemble that of many developing nations;
• it would be the world’s 35th most populous country, but would rank 16th in the people living with HIV, 88th in infant mortality, and 105th in life expectancy;
• its large and growing AIDS epidemic would elicit major concern and assistance from the U.S. government, instead of neglect.

• More people are living with HIV in Black America than in some of the world’s most affected countries, including Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Ukraine – more than the population of people living with HIV in seven of 15 PEPFAR countries.
• In areas such as Detroit, Newark, New York, Washington D.C., and the Deep South, HIV infection rates among Blacks approach those of sub-Saharan Africa. For example, HIV prevalence among middle-aged Black men in Manhattan is almost as high as prevalence in South Africa, home to the world’s largest population of people living with HIV.
• Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, only four countries – and only two in the Western Hemisphere – have adult HIV prevalence as high as the conservative estimate (2% among adults) for Black America.
  

*compiled by The Black AIDS Institute