A disturbing new study issued by the Center for Disease Control finds half of gay and bisexual men with HIV go untreated, with nearly one in five men who have sex with men (MSMs) being unaware that they're infected.
Nearly 600,000 U.S. gay and bisexual men have HIV, the CDC says, and they make up more than half the Americans with the virus even though they account for just 2 percent of the population. CDC's Sonia Singh and colleagues looked at a large national HIV survey and found that while 77 percent of gay men diagnosed with HIV have some sort of care available to them, only half were actually getting that care and just under half had been prescribed the drug cocktails recommended for just about everyone with HIV. Younger men and blacks were less likely than older, white men to be getting good treatment.
Added Jonathan Mermin, M.D., director of CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention:
“It's unacceptable that treatment, one of our most powerful tools for protecting people's health and preventing new HIV infections, is reaching only a fraction of gay men who need it. A top prevention priority at CDC is making sure every gay man with HIV knows his status and receives ongoing medical care – otherwise, we will never tackle the HIV epidemic in the country.”
For more info on the study, visit the CDC website HERE.
Last week, the CDC lauched a video campaign encouraging people living with HIV to seek treatment.
