Aug 6, 2008 6:20 pm US/Eastern
Disturbing Trend In New South Florida HIV Cases
Younger People Taking Risks
Despite Campaigns, New Cases Diagnosed Daily
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
With about 6-thousand new cases reported every year, South Florida leads the nation in HIV infections.
As if that was not cause enough for concern, last week the Centers for Disease Control acknowledged that their estimates of the number of people living with HIV are too low. Each year more people are being infected with HIV/AIDS than previously thought.
"Our new estimate shows that the epidemic is, and has been, worse than we previously knew," said Irene Hall with the CDC.
Utilizing a new blood test than can detect HIV infections that occurred within the past 5 months, the CDC was forced to revise their numbers. In 2006, roughly 56-thousand people were newly infected with the AIDS virus, that's 16-thousand more people than previous estimates.
Dr. Luis Saenz treats patients at Care Resource, South Florida's oldest and largest HIV/AIDS service organization. He says South Florida has the highest rate of new HIV patients in the country.
"So that's the scary part, the highest rate of newly HIV patients," said Saenz.
With AIDS patients living much longer due to improved medications, younger South Floridians don't see the disease as life-threatening and are taking risks.
"They don't remember," said Saenz, "they never lived through that time."
"We have new patients every single day in the clinic," said Dr. Luis Espinoza. "Every day I see one new patient."
Originally, it was thought that 45-hundred new cases of HIV were reported in South Florida every year, now the number is closer to 6-thousand every year.
Dr. Luis Espinoza, an HIV/AIDS specialist at U-M Jackson Memorial Hospital says while the CDC's miscalculation is not an actual increase, it is a success.
"We're doing a better job at diagnosing people. It's not that the numbers are more than before," said Dr. Espinoza.
But the shear numbers and high rate do trouble him as well as other experts.
"It's a little scary and a little frustrating," said Janice Bouyer with Jackson's South Florida AIDS Network. "Alarming enough that we see at least ten per day. New cases."
Despite heroic educational and outreach campaigns, Bouyer said some people have not gotten the message.
"We still see people who have never heard of HIV and AIDS in 2008," said Bouyer.
In their revised figures, the CDC reports more than a third of new infections nationwide occur in individuals 13 to 29 years of age. More than half of the new cases come from men have sex with other men.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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