In understanding the healthcare disparities and inadequacies that plague Mississippi, there is perhaps no issue that greater illustrates the inequities perpetuated by our system than our handling of the rampant spread of HIV/AIDs in this state. Reaching, and even surpassing, epidemic levels in the state, this crisis reflects not only the incapability of our systems to deal with viral disease outbreaks in general, but the the ineptitude, bordering on downright negligence, of our state’s governmental, healthcare, and spiritual leadership in addressing this often ignored catastrophe. 

My fury regarding this topic is not one unique to myself – nor is it one that lacks rooting in analytical fact: Mississippi is almost without equal in how the toll the virus continues to take on its population. A 2015 NIH study confirmed as much, reporting that the Magnolia state’s new infection rate is the highest in the country and the highest AIDs death rate – with a likelihood of death that is twice that of the mean American living in another state. This disparity is even more pronounced when centered on the two most problematic regions in the state as regards the virus: the Mississippi Delta and, just to its south, the state’s capital city Jackson. The Delta’s overall infection rate of 17.8 per 100,000 persons is over 60% higher than the national rate of 11.2 and the City of Jackson’s was the fourth highest of any metropolitan area in the country – and the capital’s infection rate for gay men, in recent years, has not failed to claim the top spot. The specific stratification of HIV/AIDS infection across the state becomes more apparent as one zooms out to the broader state level: African Americans make up only 38% of the state’s population, but represent 78% of total HIV contractions. And these last facts point to a more narrow and more troubling issue, one just as chilling as it is unsurprising: these disparities in care are just as easily linked to matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation as they are class. 

The same set of factors that dictate so much of one’s quality of healthcare in this state – maternal death rate, obesity, heart disease – is, unsurprisingly, an accurate indicator of the core groups that will have to deal with the scourge of the AIDS epidemic in this state with little to no support from the institutions charged to come to their aid. The state has consistently failed to take into account the needs of those most in need of state resources, and this failure is particularly pronounced when one considers the recent debacle regarding the state’s reluctant, tepid expansion of Medicaid, which took years too long and forced thousands of low-income-earning Mississippians to arbitrarily forgo coverage – a gap in coverage that will surely be felt by those living with HIV and AIDS. 

This jarring reality calls on us to demand our leadership understand the importance of new, forward-thinking legislation that seeks to close this gap in care. One’s access to reliable, first-rate medical care in this state should not be contingent upon class, race, sexual orientation, or one’s HIV status. The state must, as a component of its new Medicaid expansion program, expand access to HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, and awareness, as well as providing those living with HIV with assurances of their privacy in a climate where being known to have the disease can be extremely damaging to one’s professional and public life. The state must do more to ensure that access to care for this disease is not restricted on the basis of archaic attitudes about the lives led by people who are HIV positive – especially as the rest of the country moves to a more progressive way of stemming the spread and helping the vulnerable.