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High HIV Rates in MSM in South Florida
1 in 11 gay white men in Broward County (Ft Lauderdale) has HIV
1 in 22 gay, bisexual men in Florida has HIV, study says

 
 
  By Bob LaMendola | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 14, 2007
 
"One in 11 gay white men in Broward County have HIV, as well as 1 in 17 gay black men and 1 in 16 gay Hispanic men."
 
Hoping to call attention to the extent of HIV/AIDS among gay men, state health officials said Tuesday that an estimated 1 in 22 gay and bisexual men in Florida had the virus last year, an infection rate that dwarfs any other group.
 
HIV has struck some areas of the gay community even harder, with rates as high as 1 in 11 among gay white men in Broward County, 1 in 13 gay black men in Palm Beach County and 1 in 12 gay Hispanic men in Miami-Dade County, officials said. By comparison, in the least affected group, 1 in 1,625 white women had the virus.
 
AIDS activists who gathered in Wilton Manors to hear the new report challenged the methods behind the new estimate, but universally agreed the virus is not declining among gays as hoped. They called on officials and one another to find new ways to stress the message of safe sex.
 
Estimated number of gay and bisexual men living with HIV/AIDS in Florida:
1 in 12 gay/bisexual black men*
1 in 18 gay/bisexual Hispanic men*
1 in 29 gay/bisexual white men*
1 in 58 black men+
1 in 83 black women+
1 in 148 Hispanic men+
1 in 310 white men+
1 in 553 Hispanic women+
1 in 1,625 white women+
 
"Obviously, our programs are not working the way we would like," said Lorenzo Robinson of the Palm Beach County Health Department, the state's coordinator for gay black men.
 
High rates of HIV/AIDS among gay men is not new in South Florida, which persistently remains one of the nation's epicenters for the disease. Broward had 43 new AIDS cases per 100,000 residents last year and Palm Beach County 28.6, putting them in the top 20 nationally.
 
But Florida's new estimate is a first-in-the-nation attempt to quantify the impact of the disease on gay men, said Spencer Lieb, a senior epidemiologist at the state Health Department. While officials know how many Floridians are living with HIV/AIDS (82,000), and how many are gay men (34,500), no one knows how many men are gay.
 
So, Lieb said the state assumed 10 percent of men are gay. Several activists argued that the state may be underestimating the amount of HIV/AIDS among gays. But numbers aside, activists said many gay men do not practice safer sex, for many reasons: A cavalier belief that new drugs have made HIV a manageable disease instead of a killer; rebellion against safer-sex after years of sexual fear; abuse of party drugs; lack of safe-sex knowledge among younger males, and denial caused by stigma against homosexuality.
 
"There's no gay man who doesn't know having unprotected sex can lead to HIV. But sometimes they ignore it, and that's what we have not been able to address," said Christopher Lacharite, an HIV patient and prevention coordinator at Compass, a gay organization in Palm Beach County.
 
Part of the problem is that federal and state grants for education and prevention focus on well-established approaches that may be outdated, such as fliers and rap sessions, activists said.
 
Few new attempts have been made to intervene with young gay men meeting others on the Internet to organize high-risk sex parties, and education materials cannot go too far in portraying men as mates, advocates said.
 
"Prevention [efforts] are disconnected from the gay community," said Joey Wynn, an organizer at the Broward House in Fort Lauderdale. "There are new ideas out there."
 
The report notes varied impacts in South Florida. One in 11 gay white men in Broward County have HIV, as well as 1 in 17 gay black men and 1 in 16 gay Hispanic men. In Palm Beach County, 1 in 13 gay black men have HIV, as do 1 in 29 gay Hispanic men and 1 in 34 gay white men.
 
 
 
 
 
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