The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has called for the immediate release of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) latest HIV incidence numbers after Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), referred to them while in attendance at the United Nations' 2008 High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York in June 2008. The AHF, the largest AIDS organization in the US and operator of free AIDS treatment clinics in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, and Asia, also called for massive scale-up of HIV testing throughout the nation.

According to a Reuters India report, Fauci told reporters that the previous methods had shown that the rate of new infections in the US had leveled off at around 40,000 per year for the past 14 years. Now, he said, the CDC relies on better counting of more groups, households, and regions. Dr Fauci stated that the new number of 50,000, which represented a 25% increase in cases, did not mean that the actual rate of new infections has increased but that cases that had been missed in earlier counts were now being included.

Despite this admission and the urging of AIDS advocacy groups to release the data, the CDC has yet to reveal the 2005 HIV incidence rate.

The AHF has demanded the release of new CDC data since November 2007 and an increase in HIV testing nationwide, calling it an "urgent priority."

In a community letter dated November 26, 2007, and sent to the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) and others, the CDC revealed its plan to release the 2005 HIV incidence estimates "in the coming months" and stated that the information was being submitted to "an academic journal for peer review to ensure that the methods, emerging data, and conclusions are carefully reviewed for scientific accuracy and rigor before they are published."

The AHF is the nation's largest nonprofit HIV/AIDS healthcare, research, prevention, and education provider. The AHF currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 65,000 individuals in 22 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, and Asia.

For more information, please visit their Web site http://www.aidshealth.org.