THE QUIET SCOURGE

The AIDS virus is surging like a prairie fire through black communities in
the United States.

The epidemic is not getting anything like the attention it deserves. The
Centers for Disease Control now believes that one in every 50 black
American men is infected with H.I.V. That is an astonishing statistic.

AIDS is the leading cause of death for African-Americans between the ages
of 25 and 44. While blacks are just 13 percent of the U.S. population, more
than half of all new H.I.V. infections occur among blacks. Blacks are 10
times more likely than whites to be diagnosed with AIDS, and 10 times more
likely to die from it.

This would be a good time for black Americans to say, enough.

The disease is concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods, where AIDS orphans
have become ubiquitous. The suffering caused by the disease is all but
unbearable. In some cases, entire families are being wiped out. You can put
away the notion that AIDS is a disease that primarily affects gay white
males. That story has changed. Black women, for example, are becoming
infected at a frightening rate. They account for 64 percent of all new
infections among women in the U.S.

One in every 160 black women is believed to be infected with H.I.V. By
comparison, one in 250 white men is infected, and one in 3,000 white women.

Alarms should be clanging from coast to coast. The idea that black
Americans would submit quietly to this level of devastation from AIDS - as
if no lessons had been learned from the pandemic in Africa - is repellent.

"It's an overwhelming problem in the African-American community," said Dr.
Helene Gayle, who heads the H.I.V. programs at the Centers for Disease
Control. "It has continued to increase along a trajectory that we had
talked about for a long time."

There are myriad factors contributing to the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS
among blacks. Information about the threat of AIDS has not been
disseminated widely or effectively enough, particularly among youngsters
who feel they are invulnerable. Joe Pressley, an official with the New York
AIDS Coalition, told me about a 15- year-old girl who said: "Don't tell me
nothin' about no AIDS because that won't impact me. And if I was to get it,
all I'd have to do is take a pill in the morning and I'll be O.K."

Intravenous drug users spread the virus among themselves by sharing
needles, and pass it on to their partners through sexual contact. Other
types of drug use can lead to poor judgment about sexual behavior,
including the practice of trading sex for crack and other substances.

Dr. Gayle mentioned the higher rates of other sexually transmitted diseases
among blacks and noted that they help fuel the spread of AIDS. And the
extremely high rates of H.I.V. infection among black men - drug users and
men who have sex with both men and women - have made black women especially
vulnerable to infection from heterosexual contact.

Many blacks are poor and lack access not only to health care information
and preventive services in general, but even to necessary treatment once
they fall ill.

There was widespread denial in the black community for years about the
spread of AIDS among African- Americans, in part because of the powerful
stigmas attached to AIDS, homosexuality and IV drug use. Enormous numbers
of blacks with the virus suffered in silence and shame, unable to tell
their families or even their ministers.

At the same time, the attention of the wider public and the bulk of the
services related to H.I.V. and AIDS were geared to the community of white
gay men, which in the beginning was the epicenter of the problem.

Some voices are now being raised in opposition to this raging epidemic in
the black community. The consciousness of the black clergy is slowly being
elevated. Politicians are beginning to speak out. But voices here and there
are not enough. Nothing less than a mighty chorus is needed to cope with
this overwhelming tragedy - a chorus comparable in its seriousness of
purpose to the civil rights movement.

Julian Bond, chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., has been trying to get out the
following, absolutely crucial message: "This has become a black disease.
Stop thinking about this as something that happens to somebody else.
Because it happens to us."