HIV rate in New York 3 times the national average

Health officials in New York say the city's rate of HIV infection is three times higher than the national rate.

New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has estimated that in 2006, 72 in every 100,000 New Yorkers contracted HIV, which equates to a total of 4,800 individuals, more than triple the national rate of 23 per 100,000.

The estimates based on new lab technology and a newly derived statistical model developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), allows health officials to determine whether HIV-positive individuals contracted the virus within the past five months; the statistical model allows researchers to then make projections about a population's infection rate.

The Health Department says the city's demographics influence the figures as blacks and men who have sex with men, are highly represented in New York City and in these groups HIV is more prevalent.

A three-year initiative to conduct HIV tests on the 250,000 Bronx adults who have never been tested was launched in June, shortly after the release of a study which found that there was a high rate of "unsafe sexual behavior" in the city.

The study revealed that 36% of gay and bisexual New York men who had five or more partners in the previous year did not use condoms consistently and another study of 452 men interviewed anonymously at gay bars and clubs found 39 percent of those having sex with other men had not revealed their sexual orientation to their doctors, so their likelihood of being tested for HIV was greatly diminished.