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Black Americans have been overrepresented in the AIDS epidemic in the United States since the first reported AIDS cases 25 years ago. This terrible reality persists unabated.

Consider these statistics:

• Blacks in America are 13 percent of the U.S. population, but they represent more than 50 percent of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses.
• In the United States, more than 1 million people have HIV and more than 500,000 people have died from AIDS-related illnesses.
• More than 500,000 blacks in America have HIV, and more than 200,000 have died from AIDS-related illnesses. In other words, about half of HIV infections and about half of AIDS deaths are among blacks in America.

This data was recently released in a report by the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC), which exposes the urgent need to confront HIV and AIDS domestically.

"There is a danger that we view AIDS as a problem that only affects Africa, when it remains a real and growing danger in our own backyard," said Beny Primm, NMAC chair emeritus, in a statement. "That kind of complacency is killing people and it has to stop."

The following five-step plan of action is from the NMAC report:

1. Support the strengthening of stable black-American communities by addressing the need for more affordable housing.

2. Reduce the impact of incarceration as a driver of new HIV infections within the black-American community by providing voluntary, routine HIV testing to prisoners on entry and release; making HIV-prevention education and condoms available in prison facilities; and expanding re-entry programs to help formerly incarcerated persons successfully transition back into society.

3. Eliminate the marginalization of, and reduce stigma and discrimination against, black gay men and other men who have sex with men.

4. Expand HIV-prevention education programs, promote the early identification of HIV through voluntary, routine testing, and connect those in need to treatment and care as early as possible.

5. Reduce the number of HIV infections in the black-American community caused by injection-drug use through the expansion of substance-abuse-prevention programs, drug treatment and recovery services, and clean-needle-exchange programs. For active injection-drug users in particular, clean-needle-exchange programs are needed to minimize the risk of infection through needle sharing.

The NMAC recommendations are endorsed by an expert advisory panel of black-American leaders, including Julian Bond, NAACP chairman; Louis Sullivan, former U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services; David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general; Marian Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund president; and Marc Morial, National Urban League president.

As we focus on HIV/AIDS domestically, it is still worth remembering on World AIDS Day the severity of this disease globally:

• An estimated 39.5 million people worldwide are living with HIV.
• New infections in 2006 were estimated at 4.3 million with 2.8 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Deaths from AIDS-related illnesses this year were estimated at 2.9 million.
• Infection rates have risen by more than 50 percent since 2004 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This data was released in a report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in anticipation of World AIDS Day, which is commemorated annually on Dec. 1.

The UNAIDS report states that infection rates in places where HIV-prevention programs have not been consistently supported or implemented, including North America and Western Europe, are still the same or increasing.

"This is worrying, as we know increased HIV-prevention programs in these countries have shown progress in the past ... This means that countries are not moving at the same speed as their epidemics," said Peter Piot, UNAIDS executive director, in a statement. "We need to greatly intensify life-saving prevention efforts while we expand HIV-treatment programs."

The UNAIDS data only underscores the urgency of the NMAC recommendations.

Oriol R. Gutierrez Jr. is the executive director of the DiversityInc Foundation and president of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. He was the managing editor of DiversityInc Media. E-mail him at OGutierrez@DiversityInc.org.

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