South Florida leads nation in new HIV diagnoses, CDC says
The rate of new HIV diagnoses in South Florida spiked to more than three times the national average in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual HIV Surveillance Report, which found that diagnoses in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area last year averaged about 38.8 cases per 100,000 people.
Nationally, the rate of new HIV diagnoses in 2015 averaged 12.3 cases per 100,000 people, according to the CDC data, which is preliminary. The agency also reported a rise in other sexually transmitted diseases or STDs, including syphilis — an indicator that more people are having unprotected sex, particularly among the highest-risk group, men who have sex with men, public health experts said.
“It’s kind of disheartening,” Paula Sparti, a retired family physician in Miami who has treated HIV and AIDS patients since the 1980s, said of the rise in STDs. “We saw them a lot early on, before we even had AIDS, and then it decreased to some degree because people were being more careful as they were watching their friends die.”
People who have STDs are more likely to contract HIV because both are likely the result of the same behaviors and circumstances, such as having multiple sexual partners or not using condoms.
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