'Out of Control: AIDS in Black America'

Aug. 23, 2006— -- As the world marked the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS this summer, one important story was mostly ignored: AIDS is an epidemic in the African American community and it's spreading fast.

Watch Primetime's special report "Out of Control: AIDS in Black America," Thursday, Aug. 24, at 10 p.m.

Shortly before his cancer diagnosis, Peter Jennings started work on a one-hour documentary devoted solely to the issue of AIDS in Black America. ABC News has now finished his work in a one-hour Special Edition of "Primetime," reported by Terry Moran, airing Thursday, Aug. 24, at 10 PM.

"In America today, AIDS is virtually a black disease, by any measure," says Phill Wilson, executive director of The Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. Wilson also points out that while many black American leaders and celebrities have embraced the cause of the epidemic's toll in Africa, few have devoted similar energy to the crisis here at home.

Jennings's contribution to the hour is a candid group discussion he conducted with HIV-positive African American men in Atlanta about the harsh realities of dealing with AIDS in Black America.

Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. Among women, the numbers are even more shocking--- almost 70 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV-positive women in the United States are black women. Black women are 23 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than white women, with heterosexual contact being the overwhelming method of infection in black America.

Terry Moran talks to experts in several key areas that contribute to the spread of AIDS in black America, including the disproportionate number of black men in prison. Prisons have AIDS infection rates five times higher than outside the walls, and many men go into prison HIV negative and come out infected, often without knowing it, since there is no comprehensive national testing, prevention, or treatment program for prison and jail inmates.