NAPWA criticizes CDC's HIV prevention plan

The National Association of People Living With AIDS on Saturday issued a sharp critique of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new HIV prevention focus that shifts emphasis away from urging safer sex among HIV-negative people to focusing on efforts to keep HIV-positive people from infecting others, the Denver Post reports. The new prevention strategy, announced in April, would shift about $90 million in federal prevention funds away from programs conducting traditional HIV prevention outreach to those groups emphasizing HIV antibody testing and prevention-for-positives programs. NAPWA officials, speaking at the organization's national conference in Denver, said the new initiative could adversely affect nearly 300 HIV prevention programs nationwide, leaving many at-risk communities, including men who have sex with men and African-Americans, with little or no prevention outreach aimed at educating HIV-negative people about the virus. "What's really frustrating is they're trying to say what our priorities should be in our community," said Deirdre Maloney, executive director of the Colorado AIDS Project.