HIV cases decline for black women, increase for gay men: CDC

Fewer black women in the United States are being infected with HIV, but the number of young gay and bisexual men infected is rising, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of newly infected black women dropped 21 percent, according to the CDC report. Yet despite the decline, they still accounted for 70 percent of all new HIV cases among women, the federal health agency said. The rate of new infections for black women was 20 times higher than the rate for white women, the CDC said. The number of new infections among young gay and bisexual men increased by 22 percent during that same two-year period, the CDC said. The number of new HIV infections diagnosed annually in the overall U.S. population remained unchanged between 2008 and 2010 at about 47,500, according to health officials. Public information campaigns on HIV prevention and testing seem to be working in lowering the number of new infections among African-American women, said Joseph Prejean, chief of the Behavioral and Clinical Surveillance Branch in the CDC's division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in Atlanta.