U.S. AIDS policies neglect blacks

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. policies and cash may be leading the fight against AIDS globally, but they have neglected the epidemic among black Americans, the Black AIDS Institute said in a report released on Tuesday.

While blacks account for one in eight people in the United States, half of all Americans infected with HIV are black, the report found.

"We are 30 percent of the new cases among gay men, 40 percent of the new cases among men in general, 60 percent of the cases among women and 70 percent of the new cases among youth," Black AIDS Institute CEO Phill Wilson told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"Yet ... the U.S. response to AIDS in black America stands in sharp contrast to the international response to the epidemic overseas," he added.

Al Sharpton, a prominent activist and founder of the National Action Network, agreed.

"U.S. policy makers seem to be much more interested in the epidemic in Botswana than the epidemic in Louisiana. This is an unnecessary and deadly choice. Both need urgent attention," Sharpton said.

Dr. Helene Gayle, former head of AIDS for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now president of the poverty-fighting charity CARE, said many HIV infected blacks are not in traditional high-risk groups such as men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers.

"The federal government's approach to the epidemic in black America is fundamentally flawed," Gayle said. This includes both a lack of funding and poor targeting of the money, she said.