The Center for Disease Control's national study on HIV/AIDS prevalence in the United States (2006), revealed that 25% or 124, 474 of all Americans living with HIV/AIDS are over the age of 50, and 32,377 of these individuals are over the age of 60. In New York, the number of 50+ individuals living with HIV/AIDS is 34,496, or 30.7% of the US total. This percentage is slightly higher than the national average. About 20,000 of these individuals eventually aged into to the 50+ age bracket with their diagnosis (NYS Department of Health).
New therapies such as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) have increased the longevity of people living with HIV and AIDS. In previous decades, individuals may have lived 10-12 years after being diagnosed with HIV and now they may live 20 or more years. Consequently, there are an increasingly larger number of older adults living with HIV and AIDS. Indeed, many consider HIV and AIDS a chronic disease. There is a also a concern that because of the drug therapies now available to treat people with HIV and AIDS, people may be more complacent about practicing safer sex or otherwise avoiding risk behaviors that may cause HIV infection.
Awareness of HIV/AIDS is an important part of New York State's prevention work. Educating and informing people about how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and how people can practice safer sex and avoid risk is important. HIV testing should be done especially for people with risk factors such as people who have multiple sex partners, gay and bi-sexual people, people who practice unsafe sex and people who use IV drugs.
This link contains a list of free, regional HIV/AIDS testing sites in New York State: http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/aids/testing/sites.htm
Additional Resources:
This site has statistical information regarding HIV/AIDS in New York State
http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/aids/statistics/index.htm
The Center for Disease Control has information specifically for the population 50 and older http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/over50/index.htm
