GUILFORD — Re: “Negative effects” [Feb. 8].
Twin States Network, located in Guilford, has been providing HIV support and prevention services to women in Vermont and New Hampshire with HIV and their families. Like the AIDS Project, several of our programs are in jeopardy as a result of changes in National AIDS Strategy.
I wish that you had included the fact that the new priorities are based on bad data: data that did not count women with HIV unless those women knew how their sex partner acquired HIV.
Therefore, nationwide statistics on the rate of infection among women are completely skewed. For example, 60 percent of the HIV-positive women in Georgia cannot be counted because they don't know how the man who infected them got infected.
Crazy? Yes. Sexist? Probably. Racist? Potentially, as women of color have much higher HIV infection rates than their Caucasian counterparts.