Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic

President Bush is expected to sign a bill today that will extend the administration’s global AIDS initiative, which has spent about $19 billion dollars overseas in the past five years. The bill would extend the AIDS program and authorize the spending of an additional $48 billion dollars over the next five years in fifteten counties around the world, most of them in Africa.

This comes as a new report from a prominent AIDS organization accuses the federal government of doing too little to fight AIDS among African Americans. The 55-page report by the Black AIDS Institute is titled ‘Left Behind! Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic.’ It finds that the number of African Americans infected with HIV exceeds the number of people with the virus in seven of the 15 countries served by the President"s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR.

According to the report, if blacks in the United States constituted their own country, that nation would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with HIV. Two percent of adult black Americans are infected with the virus and only four countries outside Africa have a higher HIV prevalence.

Kai Wright, freelance journalist based in Brooklyn and is the publications editor of the Black AIDS Institute. His article America’s AIDS Apartheid appears in the July issue of The American Prospect.

Related Links

• KaiWright.com
• "Left Behind! Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic" [download pdf]

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