Posted on December 04, 2014
Source: Healthline
The United States finds itself in a strange position this World AIDS Day. It is the only country where a once-daily pill to prevent HIV, a combination of emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (Truvada), has been endorsed by the government for that use and is widely available. Yet just last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that only 3 in 10 Americans with HIV have the virus under control.
While the rest of the world studies the merits of Truvada for PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, here in the United States uptake of the medication has been slow. In some urban, gay communities, men have taken to shaming other men who take it, calling them “whores.”
The groups most at risk for contracting HIV in America are African-American men who have sex with men and African-American women. HIV disproportionately impacts both groups. Although blacks are a racial minority, black men who have sex with men only trailed white men who have sex with men by 600 infections in 2010, according to the CDC. Almost half of new infections in this group — totaling nearly 5,000 new cases — were among people ages 13 to 24.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, president of the International AIDS Society, told Healthline that the racial disparity in new infections persists despite the fact that black men have fewer sexual partners, are less likely to mix drugs and sex, have lower rates of substance abuse, and are more likely to use condoms than their peers.
“There’s not enough sophistication in thinking about what sexual risk really is about in an epidemic context,” Beyrer said. “Most of what you will see negative about PrEP are people thinking about individual level behaviors, such as, ‘What’s wrong with these young gay men having unsafe sex?’ All these things in their minds as to why HIV rates are higher are not in fact supported by the data.”
The problem, Beyrer said, is that the virus is so common in some communities that the transmission risk is very high every time someone has a sexual encounter. He said that’s why prevention methods like PrEP, in addition to condoms, are so badly needed.
