(lsureveille.com) The number of new HIV and AIDS cases in the Baton Rouge area is on the rise.
According to the Louisiana Office of Public Health, the seven-parish region had a 4 percent increase in new cases over the past year.
The Baton Rouge region, which includes Ascension, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana parishes, diagnosed 256 people with HIV in 2004, said Beth Scalco, administrative director of the Louisiana Office of Public Health’s HIV/AIDS program.
She said that in 2005 the Baton Rouge area had 273 new HIV diagnoses, an increase of 7 percent.
“In 2006 the Baton Rouge region had 254 diagnoses,” Scalco said. “However, data for 2006 are incomplete, and we expect the number of new cases to equal or surpass the number in 2005.”
Hope McPhatter, Wellness Education coordinator at the Student Health Center, said this can be attributed to many reasons.
“I feel that a lack of sufficient preventative education greatly contributes to the increase, but when new people relocate to Baton Rouge, they contribute to the numbers as well as Baton Rouge’s tracking system,” McPhatter said. (more…)
Sorry, but if you have been living here in America for at least more than a day you should know how AIDS is transmitted. I get so tired of hearing “professionals” make the assertion that the demographic that suffers most from AIDS do so because they lack the ability to understand the risks of unprotected sex.
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