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   XPost: bc.politics, alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.troll   
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   From: archieleach@fastmail.es   
      
   By DAN FROSCH   
      
   GALLUP, N.M. A surge in H.I.V. infections on the Navajo   
   reservation here has doctors and public health workers   
   increasingly alarmed that the virus that causes AIDS has   
   resurfaced with renewed intensity in this impoverished region.   
      
   A report released last month by the federal Indian Health   
   Service found that there were 47 new diagnoses of human   
   immunodeficiency virus on the reservation in 2012, up 20 percent   
   from 2011. Since 1999, new H.I.V. cases among Navajo are up   
   nearly fivefold, the report found. The tally of new cases from   
   last year represents the highest annual number recorded among   
   the tribe by the health agency.   
      
   I m scared to death, said Dr. Jonathan Iralu, an infectious   
   disease specialist who runs an H.I.V. clinic in this dusty town   
   where old trading posts and ramshackle motels line the main drag   
   on the edge of Navajo land, not far from the Arizona border.   
   The numbers show there is a dangerous rise, and the time to act   
   is now, before it s too late.   
      
   Dr. Iralu, who compiled the report, remembers hearing the   
   stories from former colleagues about the late 1980s when AIDS   
   first struck the reservation. Navajo men would walk into the   
   Indian Medical Center in Gallup sick with a fever or a cough,   
   and a few days later they would be dead.   
      
   In the period after that, Dr. Iralu, a Harvard-educated doctor   
   who moved here from Boston, treated a small number of Navajo men   
   with H.I.V. each year and lost nearly a third of them.   
      
   As with other groups in the United States, infection rates on   
   the reservation leveled off and deaths dropped, with help from   
   new treatments and outreach seeking to cut through the stigma   
   about AIDS among tribal members.   
      
   But over the past few years, the H.I.V. numbers on Navajo land   
   have crept up. That increase, Dr. Iralu said, can be partly   
   attributed to the infection being detected earlier, thanks to   
   years of H.I.V. education programs and more routine screening.   
      
   But Dr. Iralu and other health workers also said the virus was   
   now being transmitted from one tribal member to another, a   
   disquieting trend. In past years, Navajo were thought to have   
   contracted the disease mostly in cities and returned with it.   
      
   And though the numbers are still comparatively low there are   
   about 200 Navajo patients tracked by area clinics the   
   challenges of prevention are amplified in a place where sex is   
   still rarely discussed publicly and infection is often hidden   
   from loved ones.   
      
   Melvin Harrison, the executive director of the Navajo AIDS   
   Network, which provides services for tribal members with H.I.V.,   
   said that of the 65 people his group treats, a majority have not   
   told family or friends.   
      
   That s how big the stigma is here, he said. They are afraid   
   of rejection.   
      
   Mr. Harrison said that when he first started working on H.I.V.   
   education in the 1980s, Navajo elders cautioned him not to talk   
   openly about H.I.V. for fear that he would wish it upon the   
   tribe.   
      
   Even now, he said, old cultural mores prevail, and gay Navajo   
   men, who make up around 75 percent of the network s clients,   
   keep relationships private.   
      
   According to the recent report, men who have sex with men   
   accounted for nearly half of the new cases.   
      
   One Navajo man, who contracted H.I.V. from his partner in 2001,   
   recalled how his mother refused to hug him and served him food   
   on plastic plates when she found out he was infected.   
      
   The man, 48, who did not want to be identified because he had   
   not told his entire family, said his mother eventually came to   
   embrace him after he explained the ways H.I.V. could and could   
   not be transmitted.   
      
   But the man has not told his three brothers that he has H.I.V.   
   because he fears they will shun him. I don t think I ll ever   
   tell them, he said. I don t want to be pushed out of their   
   lives.   
      
   The intimacy of reservation life, where a hospital receptionist   
   might be a relative or a nurse a close friend, can be a barrier   
   to swift treatment and prevention. Mindful of those challenges,   
   the Indian Health Service allocated $5 million over the past   
   three years for communities to create H.I.V. prevention,   
   treatment and education programs.   
      
   H.I.V. in Indian country is very different than the rest of the   
   world, said Dr. Susan V. Karol, the agency s chief medical   
   officer. Our communities are very small, and that can lead to   
   people avoiding stigma, rather than getting the care they need.   
      
   The tribe s health department, the Navajo AIDS Network and Dr.   
   Iralu s clinic have all started outreach efforts, running public   
   service messages in Navajo, promoting awareness through social   
   media and distributing condoms.   
      
   Philene S. Herrera, who runs the tribe s H.I.V. prevention   
   program, said the recent report showed that more people were   
   being screened. But, she said, it also conveyed the need to work   
   to bring the infection rate down.   
      
   Data from the Indian Health Service and the Centers for Disease   
   Control and Prevention show why early detection is critical.   
   >From 1998 to 2005, new infection rates among American Indians   
      
   were not much higher than those of whites and were lower than   
   blacks and Hispanics. But the chances of survival after an AIDS   
   diagnosis were lower among Indians than in any other racial   
   group.   
      
   It is unclear why this dynamic exists, Dr. Iralu said. But lower   
   rates of routine H.I.V. screening and higher rates of co-   
   morbidity, like diabetes and drug and alcohol abuse, are likely   
   factors.   
      
   On a wall in the clinic s hallway, a banner implores people to   
   get tested. A fresh-faced Navajo man in a cowboy hat stares   
   solemnly ahead, an empty road behind him disappears into the   
   horizon.   
      
   I m afraid that if we wait too long, Dr. Iralu said, it could   
   turn into a true epidemic.   
      
   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/navajo-confront-increase-in-   
   new-hiv-infections.html   
      
   WTF you mean turn into an epidemic???  It's already an epidemic.   
    The good thing about it is that it kills faggots and half faggots.   
   We don't give a flying fuck about the collateral damage for a few   
   stray stupid people who get it.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)