Nationwide, AIDS has affected significantly more African Americans than whites or Hispanics. In Connecticut, however, this is only partially true. While AIDS is still a large problem for African Americans, it is also becoming an increasingly problematic disease for Connecticut’s Hispanic population.

Not only has this been addressed in various news articles (Sources 3,4); it is also evident when one analyzes the reports on Persons Living with HIV/AIDS in the state of Connecticut. Although the rate of infected Hispanic persons in the United States is only 231, the rate in Connecticut is 998, and in Bridgeport (Fairfield County’s city with the highest rate of infection) the rate of infected Hispanic persons has skyrocketed to 1154, topping that of African Americans (Table 6).

Table 6

AIDS, in Connecticut, is also not purely a man’s disease. Although the virus began in the gay community, it has since migrated into heterosexuals, particularly women (Table 5). While the cumulative AIDS cases remain 71.8% male (Table 2), in recent years the number of Persons Living With AIDS (PLWA) has dropped to 65.8%, suggesting that HIV/AIDS is now infecting more women than ever before (Table 5).

While this could be a result of any number of things, one of the possibilities is that while the gay community is aware of the threat of AIDS, and has been since the birth of the epidemic in the 1980s, the straight community has become lax about using protection and testing regularly. In addition, these statistics could explain why I guessed 40% of women in Connecticut were infected with AIDS.

Table 2

Table 5