AIDS Healthcare Foundation: Criticism Mounts As CDC Delays Stark New HIV Data

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 30 Jun 2008 - 12:00 PDT

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AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is calling upon the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to immediately release its latest incidence of HIV infections in the United States after an editorial in the respected British medical journal, The Lancet, and recent public remarks by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), raised serious new questions about the actual incidence of HIV in the US.

The CDC has withheld its data from 2005 (the latest year available) from the public-data which are widely expected to show a dramatically higher HIV rate-asserting that it is "…currently undergoing a rigorous peer review process and neither the data nor a publication date has been finalized…" according to a 'Dear Colleague' letter issued by CDC officials on November 26, 2007. The CDC letter followed widespread speculation in the community regarding the release of the numbers, which some AIDS advocates expect will show a 50% or more increase in new cases annually nationwide. Currently the CDC estimates that there are approximately 40,000 new HIV cases reported annually in the US, an estimate that advocates from AHF and other AIDS organizations believe is far too low, and likely has been for a number of years.

"What is the Incidence of HIV in the US?" asked the headline of an editorial published in The Lancet on June 21. The editorial noted that during a press conference at the UN High-level Meeting on AIDS in New York a few weeks ago, Dr. Fauci, "…said that the number of new HIV infections per year in the USA was closer to 50,000 than 40,000…."

"Now we have a leading scientist saying that prevention is broken and that the CDC's pending numbers represent a big increase, but the public-at-large and health officials are still being denied access to this crucial information," said Whitney Engeran, III, Director of AIDS Healthcare Foundation's Public Health Division, which conducts over 14,000 free HIV and STD tests annually throughout California and Florida. "Playing the clock is simply not the answer, and we are losing valuable time in the conversations and changes necessary to effectively address HIV infection in this country. We understand that the CDC has made an agreement with a peer-reviewed medical journal to review and release this information; however, the CDC could have released it themselves in its own respected journal-the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)-and had complete control over the issue."

"No talking points are going to assuage the justifiable anger from all corners of the AIDS community over the fact that the CDC has taken so long to release this critical public health information," said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "While the article in a major journal is due at the end of the summer, it is long overdue, no matter the excuse. We have to have a wholesale conversation about the next phase in HIV prevention in this country focusing on HIV testing and finding the 25% of Americans who are HIV infected, yet don't know it, and getting them into care. Treatment and knowledge are our most effective prevention techniques. The CDC has a responsibility to lead this conversation, a responsibility they continue to abdicate while suppressing this data."

About AHF

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is the US' largest HIV/AIDS organization. AHF currently provides treatment, care and support services to more than 70,000 individuals in 22 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation