After the coronavirus pandemic across the country prompted them to stay at home, many people stopped testing for other conditions, including HIV. With the country reopening, government officials attribute a sudden HIV outbreak in Boston to increased testing.
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“It’s amazing that we’ve had as many cases as we have,” said Jennifer José Lo, medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission. The Boston Globe. “It is not easy to transmit HIV. It is a highly preventable, highly treatable disease … It affects a community that is already facing many great challenges. “
The first HIV / AIDS outbreak in the 1980s hit the LGBTQ + community hard, especially gay and bisexual men of color, who had previously been marginalized and discriminated against for their sexuality. the pandemic of the coronavirus aggravated these inequalities. Today, 4 out of 10 transgender women in several major cities living with HIV, which is disproportionately common in black and indigenous communities, as well as in the Hispanic community.
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However, the Boston outbreak is mainly among people who inject drugs and lack stable housing, public health officials told The Boston Globe, and has been accompanied by a recent increase in both fentanyl use and homelessness. However, in all of these populations, stigma has proved to be a major barrier in mitigating the crisis.
“It’s a sign of how well we are treating our marginalized communities,” Joshua Barocas, an infectious disease specialist at Boston Medical Center, told the Boston Globe, saying the pre-pandemic efforts were already short. “This is another completely preventable epidemic. And it is associated with the fact that we do not provide for our most vulnerable. “
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