As people with the disease age, the need for services gains urgency in older and more rural states like Maine.
WASHINGTON – The growing number of Americans who are living longer with HIV and AIDS is creating new health care challenges and could compound existing challenges in rural states with older populations, such as Maine, a Senate committee was told Wednesday.
Once perceived as a young person's disease, HIV is increasingly a problem for the middle-aged and the elderly as advances in treatment help those people live longer and older adults stay sexually active.
Those trends force health care professionals and policymakers to adapt HIV treatment to a graying population with more complicated medical needs.
"While living with HIV is not easy at any age, older individuals face different issues than their younger counterparts," Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, said at a hearing on the changing face of HIV across the country. "HIV is still viewed as a young person's disease, and older adults with HIV may encounter ageism and additional stigma."
Just four years ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that one-third of all Americans with HIV were 50 or older. That figure is expected to hit 50 percent between 2015 and 2020, depending on the data source.
Maine, which has the oldest population in the U.S., has already hit that threshold, although HIV incidence rates in the state remain low.
According to data from the Maine CDC, 831 of the 1,654 people diagnosed with HIV were at least 50 as of last year.
