Diagnoses of HIV and AIDS infections are dropping in Northern Virginia, but public health officials are battling disproportionately high rates of infection among black residents. Blacks in Northern Virginia accounted for 106 diagnoses in 2009, down from 132 in 2008 but still 44 percent of all diagnoses in the region. Whites made up 80 cases — about 33 percent — down from 91 in 2008. And 41 Hispanic residents tested positive, down from 54, and about 17 percent of the region’s 240 total diagnoses.
Falls Church has the highest HIV disease rate in the state, followed by Richmond and Alexandria, according to December statistics from the Virginia Department of Health. Each jurisdiction has a rate more than four times the state average of about 300 cases per 100,000 people.
“I don’t have a complete answer as to why we have a higher rate than our neighboring jurisdictions — but we do, as a city, tend to see the same types of issues that are associated with more dense populations,” said Deborah Dimon, a public health nurse supervisor for the Alexandria Health Department.
“And I’m not placing blame, but we do know that Washington, D.C., has a very high rate of HIV and AIDS, and we’re right across the river,” she said.
Dimon said resources are thin to help the infected. For the first time in her memory, assistance programs to offset the steep costs of HIV/AIDS medications have waiting lists, she said.
Nearly three decades of efforts to battle HIV’s spread and its stigma have led local health departments more recently to reach out to predominantly black church congregations.
On March 5, Fairfax County’s health department is set to join with the Northern Virginia Clergy Council for the Prevention of HIV/AIDS to host a “faith summit” at the First Baptist Church of Vienna to educate participants about the disease and its spread.
“In many people’s minds, especially in the African-American community, the face of HIV was the face of a gay white man,” said Gloria Addo-Ayensu, the county’s director of health. “The idea was if I’m not white, that’s not my problem. If I’m not gay, well, that’s for those people. What it failed to convey was that this is a sexually transmitted disease.”
