Half of US youths with HIV don’t know they have it, new study says
Paul Spearing, outreach coordinator for Senior HIV Intervention Project, shows attendees at a health fair in Plantation, Florida, how to correctly use a condom May 21, 2004.
More than half of US youths who are infected with HIV don't even know it, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today.
The CDC report has a number of disturbing statistics about AIDS in the US.
Young people ages 13 to 24 account for 26 percent of all new HIV infections, according to the CDC. "Given everything we know about HIV and how to prevent it in 30 years of fighting the disease, it's just unacceptable that young people are becoming infected at such high rates," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told Reuters.
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Of the 12,200 new HIV infections that occurred in 2010 in that young age group, 72 percent were in young men who had sex with other men, CBS reported. And a total of 60 percent of the people infected in that age group don't know that they have the disease.
The infection rate among young people is considered alarming by medical professionals, HealthDay reported. It comes as the HIV infection rate among Americans in older age groups has actually declined.
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