Philadelphia Aims In Decreasing New HIV Infections By 90% In Next 10 Years
Philadelphia is set to be one of the U.S cities to receive special funding and support from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which aims to decrease new HIV infections by 90% in the next 10 years.
According to ‘Inquirer’ director of the CDC Robert R. Redfield said that “the number of new HIV cases has been dropping steadily since the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, when more than 100,000 people a year were newly diagnosed with the virus that can lead to AIDS. But beginning in about 2008, when about 40,000 people a year were diagnosed with HIV, improvement largely stalled.”
“It just stagnated there for a decade,” he said. “And it wasn’t because we didn’t have the scientific tools. It’s because we weren’t effective in implementing those tools" — like access to HIV treatment, HIV-prevention drugs, and expanded syringe exchanges, which are proved to prevent HIV among injection drug users.
After research, the CDC believes that the USA’s new HIV cases are concentrated in specific places, including Philadelphia. Targeting those places and through funding, staff and other support the agency aims to decrease new HIV infections.
“We decided to look very carefully at where the new diagnoses were occurring. We went ahead and mapped them, and I think it shocked a lot of leadership, when we saw that those 40,000 new infections, they actually occurred in only 48 jurisdictions,” Redfield said during an interview at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. “This is a pretty geographically concentrated situation. Maybe that idea of bringing an end to the HIV epidemic in America is not aspirational.”
Philadelphia has already been awarded $381,444 in planning funds as part of the initiative.
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