Africans at Microsoft is committed to raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, and to helping those affected by AIDS. Now we're extending that commitment to people of African descent generally. Today, we want to draw your attention to the AIDS epidemic killing African Americans - a crisis proportionate to that faced by some notoriously AIDS-ridden African countries.

It's no secret that people of African descent represent a disproportionate share of the world's AIDS cases, but people have generally assumed that this is strictly an African continent issue.

• True, UNAIDS reports that almost 2 million people were newly infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, bringing the total infected population to 22 million.
• True, this region now accounts for two thirds of the 32.9 million people known to be living with HIV world wide.
• True, last year, 75% of AIDS deaths occurred in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.
• The proportions are staggering: just 10% of the world's population accounts for 67% of HIV and 75% of AIDS deaths.

But what about people of African descent in America?

• In the US, just over a million people are living with HIV or AIDS - admittedly a lot less than the 22 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
• But according to the Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC), almost half of those are African American.
• The proportions are no less staggering than in Africa: less than 13% of the US population accounts for almost 50% of newly diagnosed HIV infections.

The AIDS epidemic in black America is as severe as in parts of Africa! In fact, in Washington DC, more than 80% of HIV cases are among black people - "five percent of the entire DC population is infected... that's comparable to countries like Uganda or South Africa"!

AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between ages 25 and 34 and the second-leading cause of death among black men of the same demographic.

AIDS activists are lobbying the US government for more focus on addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic amongst African Americans, calling for for the government to commit $1.3 billion annually to HIV prevention. But all the government money in the world won't make a bit of difference if African Americans don't start acknowledging the problem, taking steps to prevent it and getting tested regularly to ensure early detection and treatment if prevention fails.

Gary Bell, Executive Director of Philadelphia HIV/AIDS case management agency BEBASHI notes that "African Americans don't want to think about AIDS, talk about AIDS, have anything to do with AIDS -- and consequently avoid anything having anything to do with AIDS, including giving support..." - even though prominent people like Barack Obama, Californian Representative Barbara Lee,  and actress/singer Sheryl Lee Ralph have repeatedly urged African-Americans to talk openly about AIDS prevention.

In too many cases, people aren't getting tested, or are getting tested late, so HIV infection goes undetected until the person actually gets sick with AIDS - by which time it's exponentially more difficult, if not impossible, to successfully treat and manage.

People need to take ownership and accountability for their health - education is the key to prevention and testing is the key to early detection and successful treatment. It is critical that African Americans put aside social stigmas and preconceptions, and start facing the AIDS crisis head on - ignorance and misplaced shame are killing people for no good reason!

And here's one piece of information that might help start the conversation: "The cause of this [disproportionate prevalence of AIDS in African Americans] is not necessarily driven by behavior," said Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles.

A recent study has found that many people of African descent have a genetic variant that creates a resistance to a particular strain (vivax) of Malaria, but may increase their vulnerability to HIV infection by as much as 40 per cent, because of the way it allows the HIV virus to attach to red blood cells. Paradoxically though, once people [in the study] with this variant became infected with HIV, they lived an average of 2 years longer than the people who did not have the variant. The genetic trait is found in 90 percent of Africans and 60 percent of African-Americans and helps explain, in part, the high HIV infection rates among Sub-Saharan Africans and Americans of African descent.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Sincere ignorance has never been more dangerous than when it costs lives.

If you do only one thing today, talk to someone about AIDS. That conversation might save a life. 

Resources:

• Black AIDS Institute 
• African American HIV/AIDS Resource Center