ATLANTA - Nearly a million Americans now have the AIDS virus and the nation's ability to keep others from becoming infected still lags despite a government pledge four years ago to "break the back" of the AIDS epidemic by 2005.
The campaign, launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2001, had intended to cut the number of new HIV infections in half from an estimated 40,000 yearly to 20,000.
More than three years later, the rate of new HIV infections remains about the same, according to CDC data released Wednesday as part of the federal health agency's commemoration of World AIDS Day.
"We have a ways to go before we reach the mark of reducing new infections by half in the United States," said Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, the director of the CDC HIV and AIDS prevention program, who characterized the country's HIV infection rate as "relatively stable."
"Clearly we want to continue, and are continuing, to fund programs to reach out to people who are high risk and are not infected," he added.
About 40,000 people each year become infected with the virus that causes AIDS, an estimate that's remained unchanged through the 1990s. The CDC also said up to 950,000 people in the United States are believed to be infected with HIV and a quarter of them - or up to 280,000 people - don't know it, Valdiserri said.
The number of people in the United States diagnosed with HIV or AIDS increased slightly - by 1 percent - between 2000 and 2003, from 19.5 people per 100,000 population to 19.7 per 100,000 in the 32 states surveyed by the CDC. Nearly 126,000 people in those states had been diagnosed with either HIV or full-blown AIDS between 2000 and 2003, the CDC said.
Advocacy groups said a lack of federal funding has prevented the agency from lowering the HIV rate. Group members also said health officials are hindered by conservative political pressure and can't interdict the virus in controversial parts of society, including among drug users, sexually active youth, and gay and bisexual populations.
"The reality is, to cut the number of infections, we need to do more - you can't always do more with less. We desperately need more resources," said Terje Anderson, executive director of the Washington-based National Association of People Living With AIDS.
The CDC's 2001 campaign focused on outwardly healthy people who did not realize they had HIV. Officials then said targeting those people was key, because if they knew they were infected, they would be more careful to protect others and would take drugs that would probably make them less likely be able to transmit the virus.
The government's failure to meet its goal of halving the number of new HIV infections by 2005 could lead to 130,000 more people acquiring the virus by 2010, at a health care cost of $18 billion, HIV researchers previously said.
U.S. HIV infections rapidly increased in the 1980s, peaking late in that decade, but have remained level since the mid-1990s. Drug therapies have enabled many infected with HIV to live regular lives, but more than 18,000 Americans died of AIDS in 2003, according to the latest CDC data available.
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