AIDS is No Longer Just a Young Person’s Disease

AIDS is No Longer Just a Young Person’s Disease

Older people living with HIV have double the chronic conditions of others, their management needs are a lot more complex, and they are often old beyond their years, having a tendency to seem to age more quickly than the rest of us.

For all of us, when we hit age 50, 60 and older, it’s the time we begin to face a myriad of chronic conditions and ailments – hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, liver problems, cardiovascular issues and more.

For those who are HIV-positive and have been taking potent combinations of treatment drugs for many years, aging issues related to health are exacerbated.  Those same life-saving drugs can contribute to the development of age-related conditions.  And, of course, managing the HIV “cocktails” and having to add new treatments for various chronic conditions, makes medical care and coordination all the more difficult.

Six years ago at VillageCare, we helped kick-start a broad discussion to raise awareness about the plight of those who fit into the “AIDS Over 50” category.  We have had, and continue to have, some moderate success in promoting this issue not just in New York, but in Washington, D.C., and other parts of the country.

Jeff Crowley, President Obama’s AIDS advisor, recently visited VillageCare’s Rivington House, and we told him that all our efforts so far have failed to spawn development of a cohesive policy of HIV prevention and treatment for older adults.

In terms of prevention, we no longer can afford to stereotype older people by ignoring the fact that there are those who will engage in risky behaviors such as unprotected sex and injecting drug use.  To think otherwise is naïve.  We broadcast that message in 2004 as best we could, saying if we didn’t start targeting a prevention message to those who are older, the epidemic was going to explode in this older population.

Well, when we first sent out that message, 15 percent of all new AIDS diagnoses in New York were made up of those over 50.  Recently, the New York State Health Department newly released the latest figures it has (from 2008), showing that the number has risen to 17 percent.

But what’s more telling are these other new statistics from the Health Department:
• More than 47,000 New Yorkers over 50 are living with HIV/AIDS. 
• Thirty-eight percent of all persons living with this disease are over 50, up from 23 percent in just five years. 
• It’s estimated that the numbers of HIV-infected over 50 will double in the next 15 years, and in that same time, the number of those 65 and older living with AIDS will increase sixfold – to 30,000.

At VillageCare, where we have one of the oldest comprehensive care responses to the epidemic, we’ve gained a great deal of expertise in serving those who are older, partly because of the sheer numbers of older adults we’ve faced in our programs.  More than half of those we serve are over 50, and 20 percent are over 65.

We can most assuredly tell you that many older adults are not aware of the HIV risk factors, and for this group, the stigma of AIDS is severe.

It is long past the time that as a nation we make a commitment to the plight of older adults living with HIV/AIDS, and vow to stem the rising numbers of new AIDS diagnoses among those over 50.