Wed. November 28, 2007
Los Angeles, CA -
With World AIDS Day just around the corner, public health authorities are raising the alarm that rates of HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) are once again on the rise.
An article published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association notes that between 2001 and 2005 the number of American MSM living with HIV/AIDS rose 13 percent. Other statistics—such as a 10-fold increase in the number of syphilis cases among MSM in the United States over the same period—suggest high rates of unsafe sex could be responsible for the alarming turnaround.
"AIDS is simply not as frightening as it was," wrote the article's authors—University of Oxford public health professor Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Dr. Kevin M. De Cock of the World Health Organization.
Current treatments allow HIV-positive men to live reasonably comfortable lives and "[y]ounger MSM have largely been spared the visible devastation of untreated HIV infection," they added.
To reverse the trend, Jaffe and his co-authors suggested community and public health leaders "must call for the end of stigma toward MSM, which may mitigate the internalization of homophobia leading to sexual risk behavior" and "advocate for legal domestic partnerships as a way to promote stable, longer term MSM relationships.
"The tragedy of the epidemic for an earlier generation of MSM must not be repeated," they added.
Written By Bryan Ochalla
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