TORONTO, CANADA  --  25 years after AIDS began ravaging gay male populations in North America, public health authorities are seeing a disturbing trend - HIV infections are on the rise among men who have sex with men, reversing years of declining rates in our community.

With the World AIDS Day coming up, leading public health authorities raised the politically touchy topic in a commentary published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, asking why infection rates are rising among gay men and what can be done to stem the trend, The Canadian Press reports.

"The tragedy of the epidemic for an earlier generation of MSM [men who have sex with men] must not be repeated," the article argues.

Dr. Harold Jaffe, director of the department of public health at Oxford University, Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of HIV-AIDS at the World Health Organization and Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, chief consultant to the public health strategic health care group of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, authored the commentary.

They noted there was a 13-per-cent increase in American MSM living with HIV-AIDS between 2001 and 2005. A 10-fold increase in syphilis cases among MSM in the United States over the same period is further evidence of an increased frequency in unprotected sex, the authors said.

Jaffe and his co-authors note that breaththroughs in drug therapy for HIV-AIDS have lessened the panic that gripped the gay community in the early days of the epidemic.

They also suggest the reversal is at least in part the product of complacency and said it was time for gay community to step up HIV prevention efforts.

"Our feeling is that there's now a complacent attitude towards the epidemic in general and particularly in gay men. Somehow it's just being accepted that yes, of course, the epidemic is continuing," he said.

"The mid-80s were characterized by great activism within the gay community at a time where there was essentially no federal funding for AIDS. And the gay community took it upon themselves to say: 'We're killing ourselves. We have to do something.' And they did," Jaffe noted.

"And that activism isn't there anymore. There really isn't much activism now for HIV prevention, even though the number of men getting infected in the U.S. and western Europe is going up, not down."

Last update: 11-29-2007 01:25

Posted by RON, on 12-02-2007 15:35, 1. HIV ON THE RISE I CAN NOT BELIEVE THIS AGAIN, WHAT ARE WE DOING WRONG IN THEUSA.???? I LOST A BROTHER YOUNGER TO AIDS AND HAVE BEEN DOING MY PART TALKING ABOUT IT BUT I GESS WE NEED TO MORE. VERY DISTURBING NEWES   » Report this comment to administrator Posted by JAYME TALSON, on 12-02-2007 16:56, 2. HIV CASES ON THE RISE I'LL TELL YOU WHAT WE ARE DOING WRONG! THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORANCE AND IT SEEMS TO BE PREVALENT IN THE GAY COMMUNITY.. THEY MUST BE SUFFERING DEATH WISHES TO EXPOSE EACH OTHER TO THIS DREADFUL DISEASE! IT'S NOT GOING ANYWHERE ..THERE IS NO EXCUSE WITH ALL THE PROTECTION OUT THERE TODAY! I CAN ONLY FEEL BUT SO MUCH COMPASSION FOR SOMEONE WHO IGNORES THE DANGERS AND RISK OF PRACTICING UNSAFE SEX IN A DAY AND AGE OF DISEASE AND DEATH! GROW UP IS A FEW MINUTES OF UNPROTECTED SEX REALLY WORTH YOUR LIFE? EVENTUALLY!   » Report this comment to administrator