HIV tracking effort cut in Georgia

Georgia has been removed from a cutting-edge federal program designed to spot trends in HIV infections.

The state had been participating in the program for the past three years, but the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped Georgia’s funding this year, CDC officials confirmed Thursday.

The first set of results from the new HIV incidence surveillance program were announced to much fanfare earlier this month. Officials asserted that the annual HIV infection rate in the country was 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

Georgia had received more than $1 million in CDC funding to participate in the advanced testing and analysis, which helps spot emerging trends in the epidemic.

But the CDC, for reasons officials did not fully explain, cut Georgia from its latest round of funding, which began in January and runs for five years.

Georgia still will track and report HIV and AIDS cases, state officials stressed, but it will not have the advantage of the new technology and methods. The funding cut does not impact any other state HIV/AIDS testing or services.

“It’s a setback,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, co-director for the Emory Center for AIDS Research.

More Georgians than ever are living with HIV and AIDS — 32,740 as of 2007, which is a 27 percent increase since 2004. While HIV infections are down from the peak of the 1980s, better drugs are allowing infected people to live longer.

The new technology includes a test that can not only identify whether a person has HIV, but also whether he or she has been infected in the past five months. That information can help spot “real time” trends as to where the epidemic is spreading and what groups it is infecting, CDC officials said.

Advocates stressed that Georgia never has been on the cutting edge of HIV tracking, testing or prevention, which, they said, worsens the loss of the CDC program.

“In order to have effective prevention, we need to know who is getting infected today, not 10 years ago,” del Rio said.

CDC officials declined to discuss the reasons Georgia was not included in this latest round of funding, except to say the state was not among the 25 areas that made the cut in a competitive application process.

Georgia had provided “adequate” data for the first round of the program, said Irene Hall, chief of the CDC’s HIV incidence and case surveillance branch. She added that the CDC has reduced the number of areas funded, from 34 to 25 cities and states.

Georgia officials said the new program estimated 2,100 people were newly infected with HIV in 2006. But officials said they could not put that into perspective, since they had no previous number for comparison.

The CDC also has increased Georgia’s funding for basic HIV/AIDS reporting by 70 percent this year, to $726,257.

Jennifer Taussig, the state HIV/AIDS surveillance coordinator, said the extra money will be used to increase reporting efforts.

Advocates have criticized the state for a lack of leadership on the HIV/AIDS issue.

Jeff Cheek, the local director of the federal Ryan White funding that is divided among 20 metro Atlanta counties, said the state needs to do more to promote testing and prevention.