By Jim Brown
Researchers are warning of an HIV outbreak on college campuses in North Carolina.
A study conducted by the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services indicates that up to 60 college students in the state may have become infected with the virus that causes AIDS. The study found that 25 male college students in a three-county region of North Carolina have been diagnosed with HIV since 2001, and nearly 90% of those students were black men whose infections resulted from homosexual sex.
Lead researcher Dr. Lisa Hightow, a fellow in infectious diseases at the UNC School of Medicine, says half of all new HIV infections occur in young people.
“We feel that this is a wakeup call to the fact that HIV is still being actively transmitted and that it's involving our young people in our state. We feel that this is certainly statewide, but not necessarily limited to the state,” she says.
According to Hightow, up until this year, no reports on HIV infection rates at colleges had been published. The researcher says she and her colleagues are consulting with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and have been working to improve prevention efforts.
“We alerted all the key health department personnel as well as all the campuses, and have started to expand our counseling and testing activities on the campuses,” Hightow says. “Many of the colleges and universities that we have been working with have begun to increase student awareness of HIV.”
Hightow notes that many of the students in North Carolina who were recently infected with HIV had used the drug Ecstasy and met their homosexual partners over the Internet.
At the beginning of last year, the CDC reported approximately 362,827 persons in the United States living with AIDS. Of these, 42% were whites, 37% were blacks, 20% were Hispanics, less than 1% were Asians and Pacific Islanders, and less than 1% were American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Of the 282,250 men (13 years or older) living with AIDS, 57% were men who had homosexual sex, 24% were intravenous drug users, and 9% were exposed through heterosexual contact. Of the 76,696 adult and adolescent women with AIDS, 59% were exposed through heterosexual contact and 38% were exposed through intravenous drug use. And according to the CDC, at the end of 2001 there were 3,817 children living with AIDS in America.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press).
