"Half of deaths occur in 17-state region as federal, private money dries up"

[ensho]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25819585/


Report warns of AIDS ‘crisis’ across South


AIDS specialists are calling for a fundamental rethinking of HIV policy after a new report showed that infection with the virus was rising dramatically in the South even as it dropped everywhere else in the country.

The warning, issued this week by the Southern AIDS Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of government and private-sector programs based in Birmingham, Ala., concluded that AIDS was creating a health disaster in the South.

-snip-

Among the findings:

Although the covered area is home to only 36 percent of the nation’s population, half of all U.S. AIDS deaths in 2005 were in the South, and more than half of all Americans with HIV lived in the region in 2006.

Nine of the 15 states with the highest HIV diagnosis rates are in the South.

More than 40 percent of all new infections are in the South.

Of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of AIDS cases in 2006, 16 were in the South.

“The South is faced with a crisis of having to provide medical and support care for increasing numbers of infected individuals without adequate funding,” especially among the young and among minority Southern communities, the report concluded.
-snip-
----------------------------


there is no money - what money there is, buys less.

there is no money.

the neo cons are happy


(any AIDs the neo cons have is well hidden)

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Interesting that...

This seems to be occurring in the reddest of states, too.

[spinbaby]

2. They're dying because they won't admit they have HIV

Too repressed to admit they have sex so they don't get help when they need it.

[dsc]

4. It isn't only that

As a gay man in eastern NC I can tell you finding care for AIDS would be difficult in these small towns. Doctors just aren't well versed in it. Also, NC is terrible about funding AIDS meds for the poor (we were 50 out of 50 for a few years, now we are like 45 or something).

[ensho]

5. how are the people managing? just suffering and dying?

getting the drugs by some other means?

what's really going down. do you know?

[dsc]

9. for a time we only gave meds to those with incomes below either

the poverty line or 1.5 times the poverty line. Now we are up to like twice the poverty line. Basicly people quit working and became wards of the state, used meds from those who died, or did without.

[ensho]

11. its the "or did without" that makes me hate the neo cons even more

if that's possible

[spinbaby]

7. Really?

I've only been to the Raleigh-Durham area and they seemed quite into the big medical centers there. Even if you live in the boonies, surely you'd be able to get to decent medical care if your life were on the line. Or is rural NC even more isolated and backwards than I'd imagined?

[dsc]

10. raleigh durham is great

and there is a medical school at eastern carolina in greenville. But outside of that and charolette you are in some trouble. I wouldn't want to be on the eastern shore or up by elizabeth city.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. When my ex-sister-in-law tried to hang herself...

When my brother was down there in NC visiting his and her son(Brother had to hold her while the son cut the rope). I contacted the police officer in charge of the case and ultimately, a social worker who had nominal control. I have experience in psych social work and I wanted to know, within HIPAA constraints, what was being done for her. You see, up here in NJ, a suicide attempt, especially one so close to fruition, would get you 30 days of manditory commitment and treatment, with medications. Rightly so, too. A lot of people get that help and don't go onto a second attempt.

The ex had serious mental concerns. She abused anything she could get her hands on, including codeine syrup, she was delusional and depressed and was just a mess. The social worker told me that she was out of the hospital in three days, because there is no mandatory commitment law down there for attempted suicides. She just checked herself out. There really was no help for her. No one knows where she is now.

My great-uncle was the author of the definitive history of early NC. He was a member of an enlightened group of people in NC who, in the early 20th century, worked very hard to bring NC into the modern era and erase the vestiges of a past they felt needed to be left behind. They were quite successful at the time as well. It pains me to see what has happened in the ensuing years. I know NC to be full of some fine folks, as my family roots run deep down there and in SC. It's just sad that that area is now run by a lot of con men, tent preachers, used car salesmen and just plain idjits.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Abstinence education only => more unsafe sex => AIDS spreads more

The solution is, or course, decent sex ed promoting safe sex.

There's no reason to force Southerners not to tell their children not to have sex *too*, but abstinence education should not be allowed as a substitute for promoting safe sex.

[flashl]

6. Jails and prisons are incubators of disease among them are AIDS and HIV. Prisons and jails

reports on the number of inmates with infections returning to communities is sketchy. CDC is not following the number of infected inmates into communities either.