HIV infections in SF hit low, but drive misses African Americans

HIV infections in SF hit low, but drive misses African Americans

New HIV infections dropped to historic lows in San Francisco last year as the city amped up an aggressive campaign to essentially end the AIDS epidemic by 2020, but those efforts are not reaching everyone in equal measure, according to an annual report set to be released Thursday.

In 2014, San Francisco launched its “Getting to Zero” campaign, which aimed to cut new infections and deaths from AIDS by 90 percent by 2020, to a few dozen a year at most.

Over the past several years, San Francisco has pushed to get people who are most at risk of HIV on the regimen, an effort that likely has played some role in the drop in new infections, public health officials said.

Repeated studies also have found that when people who are newly infected are treated early with anti-HIV drugs, the amount of virus in their blood can be kept at undetectable levels, making it almost impossible for them to infect others.

In 2014, the most recent year for which treatment protocols are available, 84 percent of people newly infected with HIV were in medical care within a month of diagnosis, and 72 percent had undetectable levels within a year.

Patric Ian, 37, is not newly infected, but he was introduced to San Francisco’s aggressive treatment programs within a week of moving to the city this month, when he went for a checkup at Ward 86, the outpatient HIV clinic at San Francisco General Hospital.

Black men and women also were more likely than others to be diagnosed with late-stage HIV infection, in many cases when the disease had already progressed to AIDS.

If San Francisco is going to become the first city in the United States to end the AIDS epidemic — and, ultimately, that isthe goal — there’s a lot more work to be done in reaching communities that are not yet seeing the benefits of the city’s aggressive approach, public health experts said.

Long-term survivors are dealing with other effects of aging, including heart disease, diabetes, liver disease and cancer.

Many groups that continue to have higher risk of HIV infection and less access to care are also struggling with mental health problems and a lack of safe, stable housing.