HIV and AIDS on the rise in rural America.

• Position: Trends and Transitions - Brief Article

Since the 1980s, AIDS in the United States has been predominantly an urban problem. But the disease is slowly infiltrating America's smaller communities, where it has been largely ignored in the past. Poverty, finding physicians who accept Medicaid patients, stigma, isolation, discrimination and the sheer distance from doctors and clinics are a constellation of problems that are difficult to deal with in smaller, more rural communities.

49,375 Number of AIDS cases ever reported in rural * areas.

21,871 Number of rural cases reported since 1995.

38 Percent of rural HIV patients seeing doctors who have treated fewer than 10 patients with the virus--compared to 3 percent in urban areas.

57 Percent of rural HIV patients in a physician's care on highly active anti-retroviral therapy--compared to 73 percent in urban areas.

86 Average number of round trip miles people with HIV in the rural South travel to see an infectious disease doctor.

16 Number of states with at least 25 percent of AIDS cases in rural areas. (Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii...