(WOMENSENEWS)�The AIDS crisis is rapidly deepening for women and particularly for women of color, despite the overall decline in new reported cases of AIDS in the United States, according to a comprehensive new report.

"I am a woman living with HIV�you�re looking at it�the disease that has everyone so hush-hush," said Mala Kennedy, a Black mother of two, who addressed a Washington, D.C., briefing in May, on the report, "Women and HIV/AIDS: Overlooked and Underserved." The report was presented by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Women�s Policy Inc.

"Well, I�m out of the closet," she said of her openness about her HIV status, "and don�t you dare try to shut me back in. I won�t fit." Ms. Kennedy is a motivational speaker for a teen AIDS program and member of the community advisory boards of Children�s Hospital and Georgetown Hospital.

She spoke openly about being raped in 1989 by an HIV-positive man who infected her.

"We are the fastest growing population of HIVers," said Ms. Kennedy. "Your mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, even grandmothers are becoming infected."

She also talked about being too sick to go to work, too sick to qualify for life insurance, and too poor to have burial funds when she dies.

Women now represent 30 percent of new HIV infections and constitute an increasing share of full-blown AIDS cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of these new cases are among Black women, with Latinas running a close second.

Blacks make up just 13 percent of the total U.S. female population, but they represented 63 percent of cases of women with AIDS in 1999, a rate 21 times that of white women. The rate for Latinas was more than six times that of white women.

Most of these new cases are due to heterosexual transmission or intravenous drug use, officials say.

In 1999, there was a significant jump of 23 percent in new cases of women infected with HIV, said Jennifer Kates, senior program officer for HIV/AIDS Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

HIV in Africa and the developing world has gotten considerable and critical media and policy attention this past year, observed Alina Salganicoff, vice president and director of Women�s Health Policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But America is "focused considerably less on what�s happening in this country, and particularly to women around HIV and AIDS," she said.

The reality is worse than the statistics. Those numbers represent only reported cases of women participating in the health care system.

"We know next to nothing about women with HIV who are not in the health care system," Ms. Kates said. "And, women with HIV who are in the health care system are more likely to be mismanaged than men."

The standard of care is more likely to be lower for women because they are younger, less educated and more likely to be unemployed. Women are also less likely to be receiving the appropriate drugs that combat and prevent opportunistic infections, said Ms. Kates. Lack of transportation, lack of child care and being too sick to go out are likely causes for the discrepancy in care, she said.

Marie St. Cyr, executive director of Iris House, a community organization created by women living with HIV/AIDS and their families, said women in poverty constitute most of these new infections.

"Women being affected are the ones with the least resources to be able to sustain the brunt of this epidemic," she said.

Regardless of their HIV status, fewer than half of all women report talking to their health care providers about HIV/AIDS, the risks of HIV infection or HIV testing, said St. Cyr.

"When I was in the state legislature, I was told of the disease and I chose to just forget about it and put my head in the sand like a lot of other folks, especially in the African American community, and more specifically in the ministries," admitted Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.), recalling her refusal to confront the issue of HIV/AIDS earlier in her career.

"But then in 1994, when I got statistics that women in their reproductive years were getting the disease, I thought, �this is my problem,� �� said the congresswoman, who organized her fifth annual Minority Women�s and Children�s AIDS Walk in Southern California in April.

Her House colleague, Rep. Constance Morella (R-Md.), has introduced legislation to increase the budget from $30 million to $75 million for microbicide research at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control.

She believes the possible use of microbicides�a gel or foam that can be applied vaginally and destroy or disable the viruses and bacteria that cause AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases�could help.

"If there is this concentration on research, within five years we might well have a microbicide that could be utilized throughout the world," said Rep. Morella.

The briefing was one in a series on women�s health policy and served as an introduction for the official May 25 release of a report on the Kaiser Family Foundation�s new national survey of Americans and HIV/AIDS, titled "The AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years: The View from America."

The report indicates Americans continue to view HIV/AIDS as one of the most urgent health problems facing the nation, ranking it second only to cancer. However, the proportion of those Americans who view AIDS as the number-one health problem declined from 44 percent in 1995 to 26 percent in 2000.

Despite this drop�even in Black and other communities hardest hit by the disease�results of the survey show that a majority of Americans still support increased federal spending on AIDS.