Diagnoses of HIV/AIDS - 32 States, 2000-2003 ; Number of persons tested for HIV - United States, 2002 (2004)

An estimated 850,000-950,000 persons in the United States are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), including 180,000-280,000 who do not know they are infected. To examine trends of diagnoses for 2000-2003, CDC analyzed HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) together as HIV/AIDS (i.e., HIV infection with or without AIDS), counted by the year of earliest reported diagnosis of HIV infection. From 2000 to 2003, in 32 states that used confidential, name-based reporting of HIV and AIDS cases for >4 years, the overall annual rate of diagnosis of HIV/AIDS remained stable. However, rates among non-Hispanic black females were 19 times higher than rates among non-Hispanic white females, underscoring the need for continued emphasis on programs targeting females in racial/ethnic minority populations to reduce the number of cases of HIV/AIDS. CDC surveillance reports of HIV/AIDS are limited to cases among residents of states and U.S. territories where surveillance for non-AIDS HIV infection is conducted by using the same confidential, name-based reporting approach as for AIDS case reporting. The number of states conducting HIV/AIDS surveillance in this manner has gradually increased, resulting in available data for a greater proportion of cases in the United States. Numbers of cases, age-adjusted rates, and associated confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated, adjusting for random variation, reporting delay, and missing information on HIV risk factors (e.g., men who have sex with men [MSM] and injection-drug use [IDU]). Data from territories were not included in this analysis. (Extract of the publication)