The eastern region of Virginia continues to see surging rates of HIV infection, and remains one of the hardest-hit regions in that state.

According to Kaiser Daily Reports:

In 2008 the Virginia Health Department's Eastern Region had a rate of 19 new HIV infections reported for every 100,000 residents, which is nearly twice the rate in Northern Virginia and higher than the state rate of 12 infections for every 100,000 residents, Newport News Daily Press reports. That same year, there were 332 new HIV infections reported in the region, which includes Hampton Roads, the Middle Peninsula and the Eastern Shore.

One in three of all HIV infections reported in Virginia is in Hampton Roads, which has a large black population, according to Edward Oldfield, director of Eastern Virginia Medical School's Center for the Comprehensive Care of Immune Deficiency. Between 2005 and 2007, the number of new HIV cases on the Peninsula increased by 10%, Oldfield said. The number of new cases in Norfolk increased by 50% during the same period.
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Health care workers and HIV advocates in Hampton Roads are encouraging residents to speak openly about HIV, be tested and disclose their status. "The area is so deeply embedded in denial, both on the individual and the community level," Donald Walker, the HIV Early Intervention Services prevention supervisor for the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, said. "It's those secrets that perpetuate the virus in this community," he said (Finneran, Newport News Daily Press, 1/23).

The hardest hit population in that region of Virginia is socio-economically disadvantaged African Americans who have less access to health care.

As Facing South has reported, in the United States HIV/AIDS has become a Southern epidemic and one that is continually rising in minority communities. In fact the epidemic among African-Americans in some parts of the United States is as severe as in parts of Africa. AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between ages 25 and 34. In the South, more adults and youth live with and die from AIDS than elsewhere in the nation, creating a health disaster in the region. The South not only leads the nation in AIDS cases and rates in cities of all sizes, but more than half of the African-Americans living with AIDS and more than half of the new AIDS cases reported among blacks occurred in the South.