Biden administration’s new HIV/Aids strategy calls racism a ‘public health threat’

The Biden administration, in its new HIV/Aids strategy, calls racism “a public health threat” that must be fully recognised as the world looks to end the epidemic.

The strategy released on the annual commemoration of World Aids Day on Wednesday is meant to serve as a framework for how the administration intends to shape its policies, research, programmes and planning over the next three years.

The new strategy asserts that over generations “structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable”.

To reduce the disparities, the strategy includes calls for focusing on the needs of disproportionately affected populations, supporting racial justice, combating HIV-related stigma and discrimination and providing leadership and employment opportunities for people with or who experience a risk of HIV.

Besides addressing racism’s impact on Americans battling the virus or at risk of contracting it, the new strategy also puts greater emphasis on harm reduction and syringe service programmes, encourages reform of state laws that criminalise behaviour of people with HIV for potentially exposing others and adds focus on the needs of the growing population of people with HIV who are ageing.

More than 36 million people worldwide, including 700,000 in the US, have died from Aids-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic more than 40 years ago. Nearly 38 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2 million in the US.