A growing crisis

Saturday, Aug. 2, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

President Bush on Wednesday signed commendable bipartisan legislation to spend $48 billion over the next five years to combat the spread of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis overseas, mostly in Africa. The assistance package is a major humanitarian gesture of which this country should be proud.

At the same time, our nation is ignoring a domestic AIDS crisis — the disease is spreading among blacks at an alarming rate because of unprotected sex and drug use through injections.

The nonprofit Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles released a report Tuesday estimating that as many as 600,000 black Americans — including 2 percent of all black adults — have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The number of black Americans with HIV exceeds the total number infected in Ethiopia, Botswana and five other nations that are receiving AIDS relief from the United States.

One of the most disturbing statistics in a report full of them is that 5 percent of all residents of Washington, D.C., have the HIV infection, and 80 percent of those are black. To put that in context, the African nation of Uganda, which receives AIDS relief from this country, has an HIV prevalence rate of 5.4 percent.

There are no easy solutions, but the institute has recommended a plan of action that merits serious consideration.

Those recommendations include increased federal funding for AIDS initiatives benefiting black Americans and other minorities, more attention from black leaders, increased testing for AIDS, expanded prevention services and a higher priority on research into HIV-related issues involving blacks.

We certainly must continue our prominent role in the global fight against AIDS, but we also must pay closer attention to the dire situation facing too many Americans.