Wake Up Call: HIV/AIDS & Latinos

Rates of HIV infection are much higher than previously thought, and Latino's represent a disproportionate amount of new cases.

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Within the United States alone there are over one million people currently living with HIV, and about one-fourth of them are unaware that they are infected. “These numbers are a scathing indictment of how profoundly U.S. and CDC HIV efforts have failed,” Michael Weinstein, the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation told CNN. These numbers are disproportionately impacting minorities.

African Americans account for an astounding 45% of new HIV cases each year, while Latinos represent a frightening 22% of new diagnoses. African American’s still suffer the largest rates of new infection; but language and cultural barriers, as well as the constant threat of deportation for undocumented immigrants may increase the chance of infection and make detection and treatment more difficult for Latinos.

CDC epidemiologist Kenneth Dominguez told the Washington Post, “Minorities are overrepresented in this epidemic, and we need to target our efforts to them.”

Frank Galvan of the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles points out, “You combine the economic pressures, loneliness and immigration worries, and it pushes individuals to be a hidden population.”

Mexicana Rosario Mancillas, faced some of these cultural challenges head on. A 45-year-old lesbian living in Tijuana, Rosario was feeling the pressure to give her parents a grandchild. Mancillas looked into methods of conception and initially tried a sperm bank, but found the process cold and impersonal.

Instead she and a gay male friend decided to try and conceive. Although she never got pregnant, three years later Rosario found herself at the hospital with pain in her abdomen. It was then that Rosario and her father received the news that she was HIV positive. At the time she was given only six months to live.

“In my country, if you have HIV and are a woman, you are a prostitute.” Despite seemingly impossible circumstances, Mancillas refused to give up hope. With help from doctors in California, her six month death sentence was extended for at least another 11 years.

Rosario was lucky; she’s a U.S. citizen with medical coverage and was eligible for aid via disability benefits. For Rosalia Vargas, an undocumented mother, the constant threat of deportation has meant a daily struggle for her and her five year old son.

When Vargas came to this country she met a man, “He told me I was special, and I felt flattered.” She began dating him and they eventually moved in together. One day she came home from work to discover her boyfriend on the floor unconscious. She rushed him to the hospital where a doctor notified her that her partner had AIDS. “I felt a cold chill. I lived with him for three years and we never used condoms.

Mexican women…all we know is if you talk about condoms, you are promiscuous, ” Vargas said, her boyfriend died four months later. With her immigration status making it difficult to receive the kind of treatment and counseling she would need if she found out she was positive, Rosalia was too afraid to take an HIV test.

Dominguez says that this type of late testing is common but incredibly dangerous since it delays early treatment and increases the chances that a person might spread the virus. Eventually, Rosalia did get tested and found out that she was HIV positive.

The AIDS virus is indiscriminate, and the reality is that this epidemic should not be solely a Latino and Black concern. With the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City in full swing, the CDC reported that their previous estimate of 40,000 new cases of HIV infections per year falls about 40% short of the actual annual rate for HIV infections in the USA.

“The fact that approximately 56,000 Americans are contracting HIV each year is a wake-up call for all of us in the U.S.,” says Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS prevention. The new estimate is “evidence of a failure of our government and society to do what it takes to control the epidemic,” adds Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization project.

What do you believe can be done to address this epidemic in our community? Bilingual sexual education in public schools? Better health care for immigrants? Do you have any friends or family who have found out they were HIV positive?

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