[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11772-11773]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE

  (Mrs. CHRISTENSEN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. With the International AIDS Conference less than a 
week away, I join my colleagues to celebrate the progress we've made in 
the fight against HIV/AIDS, to honor those who have lost their battle 
to this disease, and also to remind everyone that we still have much 
work to do in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, but also the 
United States, where more than 1 million people--a disproportionate 
number of whom are people of color--are living with HIV and AIDS today. 
Blacks and Latinos together account for 64 percent of all new HIV 
infections, yet are only about 28 percent of the population. The AIDS 
case rate among African Americans is nearly 10 times higher than that 
of whites; and one recent study found that 2 percent of all blacks in 
the U.S., compared to only .2 percent of all whites, are HIV positive. 
In my district, the U.S. Virgin Islands, which is predominantly black 
and Hispanic, we're extremely hard hit, with the

[[Page 11773]]

third largest AIDS case rate in the Nation.
  The conference offers all of us an opportunity to reinvigorate our 
commitment to battling this disease, to reinforce existing 
relationships and forge new ones with the leaders in the fight against 
HIV/AIDS, and to take significant steps toward making HIV/AIDS a 
disease of the past.

                          ____________________