Huge Advancements in the Battle Against HIV/AIDS

I'm not sure how many of you have heard but there have been some amazing advancements regarding HIV prevention/treatment this month! This is especially good news and I thought an appropriate thing to blog about considering my past posts on sex education in the US (you can see them here and here).

Early in March, a baby in Mississippi was declared 'functionally cured' of HIV after being treated with a high does of antiretrovirals. This child is considered only the second person in the world to be cured of HIV. The first patient was a man named Timothy Brown, who received a blood marrow transplant (to treat his leukemia). Timothy received marrow from a person who is HIV resistant and thusly his blood cells became HIV resistant as well (the new ones produced by the marrow for those not scientifically inclined).

Sex Education in the US - A Summary

Sex education in the US has been an area of interest of mine for some time. When I was studying Social Justice at Rutgers I was curious to find out the correlation between sex education practices and results such as teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and transmission of other STI's. 

Looking at the recent CDC Surveillance report, I noted in another post that it seems that the South has a higher preponderance of HIV transmission. I also noted that there seems to be a correlation with the extensiveness of sex education (many southern states don't have mandatory sex education or STI prevention, or birth control methodologies taught). 

HIV Infection Rate: New Report

The CDC's newest HIV Surveillance Report is the first to allow researches to map the HIV infection rate across the whole United States. It was added to the list of characteristics that would be examined in the CDC's report. The report also takes things such as sex, race, age, sexual practices, and drug us (needle use) into account.

The data from this new category shows an interesting trend. It seems that HIV/AIDS infections are highest in the geographical region identified as the South. It's important to not that high infection rates are not limited to the South but are more prevalent there. The CDC reports infection rates (per 100,000 population) of HIV (any stage) in 2011 as "In 2011, rates were 20.9 in the South, 18.1 in the Northeast, 12.0 in the West, and 9.3 in the Midwest."