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World AIDS Day: 16,000 Tennesseans HIV positive

aids.gov

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WMOT)  --  It’s World AIDS Day 2014, and state officials say the number of people in Tennessee who are living with H-I-V continues to grow.

Dr. Tim Jones is with the Tennessee Department of Health. He says there are now more than 16-thousand people in the state with the disease, with nearly 900 new cases reported annually.

Jones also says those infected are living longer.

"With better drugs and protocols for taking care of folks, people are living much, much longer than they were a decade or two ago. And many folks are actually living a normal lifespan, which is really exciting."

Jones notes that the group with the greatest risk of contracting H-I-V continues to be men who have sex with men, but he says increased outreach is also needed to Tennessee's communities of color.

"African-Americans are, on a per capita basis, about three times more likely to have HIV than the general population, so that's clearly a group which we target for prevention as well."

AIDS has killed more than 36-million people worldwide and an estimated 35-million are living with H-I-V.