(Headline USA) The Biden administration in its new HIV/AIDS strategy calls racism “a public health threat” that must be fully recognized as the world looks to end the epidemic.
The strategy released Wednesday on the annual commemoration of World AIDS Day is meant to serve as a framework for how the administration intends to shape its policies, research, programs and planning over the next three years.
The new strategy asserts that over generations “structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable.”
HIV, which can only be transmitted through bodily fluid, is spread predominantly through reckless behaviours such as unprotected sex with multiple partners and needle-sharing.
However, in theory it also can be passed down from mother to child, through blood transfusions and other incidental encounters.
While blacks are genetically predisposed to some diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia, there is no science supporting the notion that HIV targets a particular race.
However, cultural conditions within the black, urban community—oftentimes enabled by left-wing policies on matters like abortion, prostitution and drug use—have made them particularly susceptible.
Although it suggests doing little to mitigate the spread, Biden’s strategy aims to reduce the disparities by focusing on the needs of disproportionately affected populations; supporting racial justice; combating HIV-related stigma and discrimination; and providing leadership and employment opportunities for people with or who experience risk for HIV.
Besides addressing racism’s impact on Americans battling the virus or at risk of contracting it, the new strategy also puts greater emphasis on harm reduction and syringe service programs, encourages reform of state laws that criminalize behavior of people with HIV for potentially exposing others and adds focus on the needs of the growing population of people with HIV who are aging.
More than 36 million people worldwide, including 700,000 in the U.S., have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic more than 40 years ago. Nearly 38 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2 million in the U.S.
President Joe Biden’s lack of emphasis on the behaviors of those with HIV stands, ironically, in stark contrast to his scapegoating about the coronavirus—another disease that has affected minorities disproportionately.
Although the majority of those unvaccinated in the country are black and Latino, Biden has sought to curb their civil liberties including mobility and employment status, falsely claiming that it is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” despite strong evidence of breakthrough cases and vaccine-resistant variants.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
