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AIDS spikes there because of lack of funding, and rural communities.AIDS specialists are calling for a fundamental rethinking of HIV policy after a new report showed that infection with the virus was rising dramatically in the South even as it dropped everywhere else in the country.
The warning, issued this week by the Southern AIDS Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of government and private-sector programs based in Birmingham, Ala., concluded that AIDS was creating a health disaster in the South.
AIDS deaths fell or held steady in other parts of the country from 2001 to 2006, the last year for which complete figures were available, but they rose by more than 10 percent in the South, according to the report, titled “Southern States Manifesto 2008.”
The report, an update to a landmark 2002 report that identified the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS in the South, was based on data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state health departments and academic researchers. It defined the region as Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Among the findings:
* Although the covered area is home to only 36 percent of the nation’s population, half of all U.S. AIDS deaths in 2005 were in the South, and more than half of all Americans with HIV lived in the region in 2006.
* Nine of the 15 states with the highest HIV diagnosis rates are in the South.
* More than 40 percent of all new infections are in the South.
* Of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of AIDS cases in 2006, 16 were in the South.
“The South is faced with a crisis of having to provide medical and support care for increasing numbers of infected individuals without adequate funding,” especially among the young and among minority Southern communities, the report concluded.
“African-American women are 83 percent of all [new] cases that we can document,” said Bambi Gaddist, executive director of the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council and a member of the AIDS Coalition board of directors. “And the new epidemic is young people. They’re between 22 and 24.”
‘Specific problems here in the South’
AIDS specialists pointed to unequal government funding of anti-AIDS programs as a major problem in the South, where they said economic and cultural factors played unique roles in transmission of the disease.
“We have specific problems here in the South, especially because of our rural areas — transportation issues, translation, lack of access to proper health care,” said Mary Elizabeth Marr, executive director of the AIDS Action Coalition of North Alabama.
Education plays a particularly important role in fighting HIV in rural communities, said Marr, who blamed the “it can’t happen to me factor.”
“Some of those are parents in denial that their children are sexually active [and] people not getting tested,” she said. “People aren’t getting proper health care early on and are transmitting the disease to others.”
But “even though we have now seen this increase in the South, we are not seeing the increase in funding for the Southern states,” she said.
The Southern AIDS Coalition blamed “rising infection rates coupled with inadequate funding, resources and infrastructures” for what it called “a disparate and catastrophic situation in our public health care systems in the South.”
“There are vast geographic areas that encompass large cities, less urban areas, and rural areas that result in screening, care, treatment, and housing challenges,” it said. “Historically, the South has also received the least amount of federal funding.”
At the same time, “only 19 percent of U.S. philanthropic commitments for HIV/AIDS” go to the South, it said.
More funding, education, testing urged
The coalition called for more “age-appropriate, science-driven education for prevention of all sexually transmitted diseases,” along with increased federal funding for “prevention, treatment, care, and housing in the southern United States to rectify the historical inequities embedded in the federal HIV and STD funding portfolios.”
“Unless we act to correct funding and treatment disparities, we endanger not just isolated communities, but our states and our nation,” the report said.
Specialists said people could not get treatment if they did not know they were infected, which the report said could represent as many as 25 percent of all HIV cases in the South. They added a plea for inexpensive testing for every sexually active person.
“People in the South will die for lack of a simple test that can cost under $8 to provide, so we must work together to provide early screening,” said Evelyn Foust, a disease expert with the North Carolina Division of Public Health and a member of the AIDS Coalition’s board.
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LinkCOLUMBIA, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford is encouraging South Carolina residents to voluntarily conserve water so water restrictions don't become mandatory.
Officials say a drought gripping the state continues to worsen. The Department of Natural Resources says the worst conditions are in the Upstate, where some wells have gone dry and Lakes Hartwell and Thurmond along the Georgia state line are already 10 feet below where they should be.
A special drought committee will meet next month and could suggest mandatory water restrictions for nonessential activities like washing cars, watering lawns and filling swimming pools.
The committee says five northwestern counties are in an extreme drought, which is the worst category.
The South is drying up, with refusal to put in mandatory measures to conserve yet. And they just pray for rain. That's not working.ALBANY, GA (WALB) - Despite almost daily rains in recent weeks, southwest Georgia is still dry.
The National Weather Service classifies the entire area in a severe drought. Water restrictions remain in place and could become permanent. Water experts say rivers and streams are still 10 percent below where they should be for this time of year.
With farmers now in their heaviest irrigation season, we're using the rainfall we get just as fast as it falls.
"People say you can grow grass anywhere that's not true," said David Thornton, of Albany.
David Thonton's yard is proof of that, he has drought spots that even recent rains can't help, and he says water restrictions haven't made it any easier.
"It's kind of hard to keep track, the correct days you're supposed to use, then you got the time limit at ten o'clock in the morning you cut it off so it's sometimes difficult to keep up with it you just pray for rain," said Thornton.
Those prayers have been answered Albany got two inches of rain Tuesday, but daily showers won't break a drought.
"When you get these two inch downpours in the afternoon it kind of makes you think well its not so bad but we need that kind of weather continually and it would take some type of tropical system or a couple of them to really break the drought," said Mark Masters, Flint River Water Planning & Policy Center.
Dry conditions mean water restrictions are here to stay and sprinkler system specialists are working overtime. They say new lawns practically need irrigation to take root, and now they're recommending a rain sensor for those increasingly popular system to deal with rain showers like we saw Tuesday.
"It will bypass that days activity and so they won't be wasting water and watering for three or four hours and just wasting water that they don't need to be buying and it saves the city and it saves the environment from wasting water," said Larry Price, Albany Winnelson President.
So far, July in south Georgia has seen 26 inches of rain fall, that's wetter than the 21 inches last July, but stream flows are still running at 10 percent of where they should be, proving dry conditions won't improve overnight.
The state climatologist won't take a look at changing water restrictions in Georgia until after the first of August.
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Rural areas with very little mass transit cause big jumps in gas prices.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drivers in the South have been hit hardest by soaring U.S. gasoline costs and state governments there should take more steps to help cut fuel consumption, said a report released on Tuesday.
Average motorists in Mississippi spent nearly 8 percent of their incomes on gasoline in 2007 and drivers in South Carolina and Georgia spent more than 7 percent, according to the report released on Tuesday by environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Meanwhile, drivers in the Northeast spent the least amount of their incomes on fuel with Connecticut motorists paying just over 3 percent. Drivers in New York spent about 3.3 percent and motorists in Massachusetts spent about 3.5 percent.
The report comes as the federal government has been hard-pressed to protect consumers, already hit by the housing and credit crunches, from average retail gasoline prices that are bubbling near record levels of above $4.11 per gallon hit earlier in the month.
The report, called "Fighting Oil Addiction: Ranking States' Oil Vulnerability and Solutions for Change," ranked the states for their setting of fuel conservation measures like incentives for buying fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles, slowing suburban sprawl, and targets for reducing driving.
The federal government should lead cuts in fuel demand by setting fuel-economy standards for cars and heavy trucks, the report said.
Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama have also said they support economy-wide emissions caps on greenhouse gases, which could help phase out gas guzzling vehicles.
In addition, "states can do a whole lot more than they realize to cut fuel costs," said Deron Lovaas, vehicle campaign director for the NRDC.
California, New York and Connecticut ranked highest in the report in the number of steps taken to fight consumption.
Mississippi had not taken any of the 10 conservation steps in the report while South Carolina had taken two and Georgia, three. All three states ranked low on the priority they had given to mass transit.
Some of the conservation steps taken by states, including research and development grants for fuels and cars, have been adopted too recently to measure their impacts on consumption. But the states that have acted should log cuts in demand similar to the way states like California have slashed per capita power demand after taking conservation steps on electricity, Lovaas said.
In short, the three things which hippie liberals from San Fran and New York City worry about, the queer disease, global warming, and ever running out of oil, are hitting the place that keeps churning out people who denying they are threats to 'real Murikans'. The cosmos has a dark sense of irony.
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- PeZook
