Millions of people in the United States live with HIV

Although HIV/AIDS has mainly faded from the headlines, the disease continues to be infecting millions. When looking at the United States, about 1.1 million people age 13 and older are living with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A decade ago, the sheer number of U.S. infections was declining substantially every year, but that stopped in 2013. Since that time, about 39,000 individuals have become newly infected each year, which prompted the CDC this present year to declare the nation’s progress in preventing HIV has stalled. Current commentary by four top public health insurance and AIDS experts, published within the New England Journal of Medicine, reports that a lot more than two-thirds of new infections occur those types of who will be poor or who are ethnic, racial or sexual minorities. The CDC did note locales which have enacted plans to eliminate HIV epidemics within their communities have observed some success in prevention, with new HIV infections down 40 percent in Washington, D.C., and 23 percent in New York City from 2010 to 2016. No cure exists for HIV or AIDS. (AIDS itself will not kill; nonetheless, it allows other diseases to kill.) Nearly 16,000 people into the United States diagnosed with HIV died in 2016, the newest data available. However, antiretroviral therapy — an HIV treatment regimen that has been introduced into the mid-1990s — can keep HIV controlled, preventing it from progressing to AIDS. Individuals who begin this treatment early and take it regularly as recommended can reduce, and possibly eliminate, their odds of transmitting HIV to others and generally can live long healthy lives.

Reference

The Big Number: 1.1 million people in the U.S. live with …. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-big-number-11-million-people-in-the-us-live-with-hiv/2019/05/10/f9f74338-726c-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html

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