Rights Groups Says Southern U.S. “Fails” In Reducing AIDS Cases
New York, NY, United States (NewsBahn) – An international rights organization is accusing state governments in the southern United States of a “public health failure” that has seen the number of HIV/AIDS cases in the region rise the most in the nation because of policies that are ineffective and discriminate against people with the virus.
Human Rights Watch, in a report issued Friday, said “progress in the fight against AIDS in the southern United States is undermined by state laws and policies that impose ineffective approaches and fuel stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.”
The report says HIV is increasing in 17 southern states at the fastest rate in the nation. It documents practices in the region that HRW says have undercut progress on combating HIV, including:
- Refusal of southern states to provide comprehensive sex education in the schools
- State laws that impede access to sterile syringes
- Criminal penalties for exposing others to HIV.
The report termed as “alarming” the rise of HIV/AIDS in the South, saying that “roughly half” of Americans who die of AIDS live in the South. Those states also have the highest rates of new HIV infections in the country, HRW said. Hardest hit are minorities, particularly African-Americans, whom the report said “bear a disproportionate burden of infection.”
The report found that in 2008 in Mississippi, for example, African-Americans were 37 percent of the population but 76 percent of new cases of HIV. In South Carolina, African-Americans were 28 percent of the population but 72 percent of people living with AIDS.
“The South is the epicenter of HIV infection in the United States, but southern states resist proven methods of HIV prevention and refuse to provide adequate funding for HIV care and services,” said Megan McLemore, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is a public health failure, but also a violation of fundamental human rights for those at risk and infected with HIV.”
The 23-page report, “Southern Exposure: HIV and Human Rights in the Southern United States,” was released in advance of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1
The 17 states cited in the report lead the nation in the percentage of people living in poverty, according to the organization. They also lead in the lack of access to health care and the numbers of people without health insurance, factors that increase the risk of HIV infection or AIDS deaths. HRW said southern states also report the nation’s highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, sexually transmitted diseases that can significantly increase an individual’s risk of becoming infected with HIV.
“While the federal government has recognized the importance of comprehensive sex education, many southern states continue to promote unproven and ineffective abstinence-based approaches,” HRW said. The result “is the denial of potentially life-saving information to adolescents at risk of HIV infection. Abstinence-based programs often include, and even require, negative messages about homosexuality, which can stigmatize gay youth and drive individuals in need of HIV information away from essential treatment and services.”
Some laws in southern states also prohibit needle exchange programs in which used syringes are exchanged for clean ones. Drug users sharing needles is considered a significant method of transmitting the AIDS virus.
Other states in the region punish those who knowingly pass the virus to others, HRW noted, discouraging people from being tested for AIDS.
Human Rights Watch also charged that both the federal and state governments do not adequately fund HIV/AIDS programs in the South. HRW said federal funding “has consistently shortchanged the South due to outdated formulas based on cumulative AIDS cases rather than on new HIV infections.”
In addition, restrictive Medicaid eligibility rules in southern states leave many with HIV unable to afford health care. In Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, HRW said, 40-65 percent of people diagnosed with HIV are not in regular treatment, compared with the national average of 30 percent.
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