Statistics

The national cumulative AIDS rate for the United States is 339 cases per 100,000 people. The cumulative AIDS rate for all of Manhattan is 3,260 cases per 100,000 people, with no zip code going below twice the national rate (Table 1.1). This discrepancy only begins to describe the hold that AIDS has on Manhattan, as seem in two clear patterns.

            The zip codes of 10011, 10001, and 10014 have the highest rate of cumulative AIDS diagnoses for males and both sexes (Tables 1.1 & 2) and people living with HIV/AIDS for males and both sexes (Tables 2.1 & 2.2). In addition 10001 has the highest rate HIV diagnose between January 2001 and December 2004 (Table 3.1). These zip codes create a strip running south from 34^th St. to King St. and west from the river to 5^th Ave that encompasses the Village and Chelsea, two neighborhoods known for having large homosexual populations. Due to the neighborhood these zip codes are located in this data is to be expected. New York was one of the first cities to have patients diagnosed with AIDS, and the gay population was not nearly as mobilized as its West Coast counterparts. When looking at the male racial data we see the cases fairly uniformly distributed in respect to population in these neighborhoods (Tables 1.2, 4, 5 & 6). In fact form the data we can interpret that AIDS is beginning to decline in these neighborhoods as while three zip codes have the highest cumulative AIDS cases, only one of the zip codes is in the top five zip codes of recent HIV diagnoses (Table 3.1).

          This leads to the new issue that the data presents us with, and The New York Times addressed in a front page story: The rise of HIV/AIDS in northern Manhattan, home to Harlem and Washington Heights. Of the five zip codes with the most HIV diagnoses between 2001 and 2004 two were located in the heart of Harlem (Table 3.1). In addition the cumulative AIDS diagnoses for women are highest in zip codes above 96^th Street (Table 1.3). Continuing to look at this table the cases for black females constantly go into the triple digits while white female cases never go over 80.  Our concerns from looking at the data should be its spread into new aspects of the population, at numbers rivaling those during the early AIDS crisis.