San Francisco HIV report shows great strides, some obstacles

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco released its annual HIV report Thursday. It shows great strides, but also some obstacles toward winning the war on AIDS.

The new numbers do show progress toward an initiative the city launched last year called Getting to Zero. That's a pledge to become the first city in the United States to reach zero new HIV infections.

First, the good news: New diagnoses are down, dropping 17 percent from 2014 to 2015. Awareness is up. Ninety-three percent of the people with HIV know they're infected and survival probability is up. The median is 87 percent five years after being diagnosed.

And for the bad news: racial disparities continue. African American men have the highest infection rate, 140 out of 100,000 are infected. Latino men fare slightly better, but still 83 infected out of 100,000. For white men, it's 52 out of 100,000.

There's also bad news for women.

"Women are less than likely to be virally suppressed compared to men, so we still have important gaps," said University of California, San Francisco Dr. Hyman Scott.

The city says at the current rate they could get to zero new HIV infections by 2020, but only if the disparities are addressed. So San Francisco has added $3 million of new funding to fight the battle.