Jamaiya Stovall

June 4, 2019
Block 6

If we gave African-Americans access to healthcare in Illinois, then the number of Hiv

widespread will decrease. Did you know that 1 in 7 African-American aren’t aware that they
have HIV? Without health care both men and women are most likely to die and/ or pass it on to
a partner . Is there health care available in the black community? Although there is healthcare
available many African-Americans don’t have access or they aren’t aware.
HIV spread comes from a majority African-American Gay or bisexual men that don’t have
access to health care. In 2016, there were 6,804 deaths among blacks/African Americans with
diagnosed HIV in the US. 28% of African-Americans have no access to healthcare, IV
diagnoses among African American gay and bisexual men overall remained stable, but
increased 30% among African American gay and bisexual men between the ages of 25 and 34
years.
Male-to-Male sexual contact is the main cause of Hiv and spreading it is due to
heterosexual contact. MSM (also know as men to men) are 28 more times more likely to acquire
HIV then the general population. Due to this virus being so high to the African-Americans there
is more likely a chance of the virus being exposed. There are more ways you could get HIV, but
is there any medicine to prevent this from spreading? There are medicines for this,but it won’t
go away you’ll still have it risk of it spreading will be low. Someone who has achieved and
maintained an undetectable virus load stops taking HIV medications the viral load will rebound
quickly.
Many may disagree and say,If many African-American males and females use protection
and have access to health care then they are more likely to reduce the spread of HIV. Most
likely that isn’t true, there is so many ways you can get Hiv through certain body fluids, not just
having sex. Hiv isn’t something that you can just get rid of condoms can also break and not
everyone has access to health care, so if we came up with programs we could most likely be
able to maintain it.
Nearly 40% of new HIV infections are transmitted by people who do not know they have the
virus. This may be a result to not having access to healthcare not being able to check their
status.
https://www.hiv.gov/blog/hiv-african-american-community-progress-our-work-far-over

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/category/health-care/

https://aidsvu.org/state/illinois/