HIV/AIDS was the leading killer of African Americans ages 25 to 44 from 1990 through 2000

Leslie Fulbright:

From the epidemic's start, black people have been disproportionately likely to test positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. African American men, women and children now account for 51 percent of new HIV diagnoses -- up from 25 percent in 1985 -- and 55 percent of people dying nationally of AIDS, although they make up 13 percent of the U.S. population.

The black community's high poverty rate contributes to this disparity, because poor people have less access to medical information, preventive health care and treatment, researchers say. Higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases also contribute because a person with genital lesions, for example, is more likely to contract HIV and a person carrying another disease in addition to HIV is more likely to transmit the HIV.

But AIDS activists, researchers and people with HIV say a much bigger factor has been the ongoing reluctance by many African Americans to address the disease at all.

More than 2 percent of all African Americans are HIV-positive, a higher incidence rate than in any other group, according to a federal analysis of cases between 1999 and 2002 cited by the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Black women make up two-thirds of new HIV diagnoses among women, and black teens make up 66 percent of cases among youth.

African Americans are the only group experiencing a continuous rise in HIV infections, even though there is little difference from the rest of the population in how black people contract it.

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