A new report by the Black AIDS Institute has found that the United States spearheads the global response to HIV/AIDS abroad, but neglects problems with the disease at home, especially among black people. Detroit, Newark, N.J., New York City, Washington, and the Deep South are areas which have HIV/AIDS prevalence similar to that of Africa among blacks, yet it seems that our government is less preoccupied with our citizens than with inhabitants of Africa. Fighting the disease in sub-Saharan Africa is apparently more important that fighting it at home.

The Bush administration has spent about $19 billion overseas in the past five years to fight HIV/AIDS. Bush is to sign a bill today that will extend the program and authorize the spending of $48 billion for the next five years, while there are at least 500,000 African Americans hit by the deadly disease. The so-called "Black America," which is made up of some 39 million African Americans, would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with HIV.

Washington DC has a HIV infection prevalence of no less than 5 percent, nearly matching that of the most HIV-intense countries of Africa. Phill Wilson, CEO of the Black AIDS Institute and one of the authors of the report, said that more black Americans are infected with HIV than the total populations of people living with HIV in seven of the 15 countries served by The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The U.S. government requires countries receiving PEPFAR support have a national AIDS strategy in place, while the United States itself has no strategy for its own epidemic, the report, titled Left Behind! Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic, alleges.

At the moment, 32 percent the people in Africa that are infected with HIV are now using medication to keep them alive, and one of the most important things is that many pregnant women are taking drugs that prevent their babies from getting infected too. This is made possible in part by The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). However, black Americans account for almost half of the AIDS cases in the US, and their numbers continue to grow.

New research published recently in a special HIV/AIDS issue of The Lancet reveals that the life expectancy of HIV patients taking antiviral drugs has increased more than 13 years since 1996, while deaths have dropped by almost 40 percent. People who started taking the drugs at age 20 could, on average, live another 43 years, lead researcher Robert Hogg, from the British Colombia for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver and his colleagues discovered.

Also, an international team of researchers discovered that blacks present a gene variant, which, while ensuring a higher level of protection against some types of malaria, increases the vulnerability to HIV infection.