About one in 15 people living in the United States who has HIV is 13 to 24 years old—and more than half of them don’t know they have the disease, new estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show, and the agency says schools must work harder to prevent HIV’s spread.
Those estimates, shared last week by the federal agency, are from 2009. In all, about 1.1 million people in the United States have HIV, the agency reported.
The CDC estimates that about 70 out of 100,000 teenagers and young adults have HIV, and they accounted for 12,000 cases about 25 percent diagnosed in 2010. Meanwhile, 13- to 24-year-olds represent only about 20 percent of the total population. The majority of the new cases, about 60 percent, were among black teenagers and young adults. Another 20 percent of the new cases were among Latinos of the same age.
