HIV cases up 32 percent among Tenn.’s young people
The number of Tennesseans aged 15 to 24 who were newly diagnosed with HIV jumped by 32 percent between 2005 and 2009, the last year for which statistics are available. That’s according to state health department figures. Victoria Harris is director of education for the Vanderbilt Comprehensive Care Center, which specializes in HIV treatment. She told The Tennessean the success of anti-retroviral drugs in treating AIDS has made people complacent. But for various reasons, the drugs don’t always work well. For one thing, people having unprotected sex are spreading mutations of the virus that are drug-resistant. And there’s no guarantee that the government will continue to subsidize the drugs for those who cannot afford them. New HIV cases were down slightly among other age groups as a whole.
