The study concludes that the infection rate is 56,300 per year as opposed to the 40,000 a year that was thought to have been the average rate for the last several years. The new findings, experts say, are not necessarily due to more infections, but are a result of improved tests and a more accurate and new statistical methods.
One thing that has stayed the same, however, is that the rate of new infections is higher among gay and bisexual men, and in African-Americans, with 53 percent of new infections being in those groups.
African-Americans are seven times as likely as whites to become infected, and Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to contract the disease.
What the new findings mean is that the epidemic in the United States is worse and has probably been worse for the last 15 years than health officials realized.
One Representative is critical of the Bush administration for failing to assign enough money at prevention education and measures. Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote in a statement, "H.I.V. prevention has been under-funded and too often hindered by politics and ideology."
According to Waxman, the administration had cut domestic funds to fight H.I.V. "Since fiscal year 2002, when adjusted for inflation, C.D.C.'s prevention budget has actually shrunk by 19 percent. The president has recently requested decreases in funding for H.I.V. prevention at C.D.C."
While critics bash Bush for decreasing spending on H.I.V prevention at home in the U.S., Last week, he signed a $48 billion global AIDS bill to continue a program that he called "the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."
The bill was enacted to fight H.I.V./ AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The new study will be published in the Aug. 6 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
