Every tax penny returned to meet poor and middle class needs is a penny Republicans can’t give to a millionaire, so it should come as no surprise that the Republican solution is to ignore and/or stigmatize the disease. As if this were not sufficiently shameful, the lack of preventive services in the states where Republicans have control amounts to a virtual death panel, condemning high risk populations.

An international rights organization is accusing state governments in the southern United States of a “public health failure” that has seen the number of HIV/AIDS cases in the region rise the most in the nation because of policies that are ineffective and discriminate against people with the virus.

Human Rights Watch, in a report issued Friday, said “progress in the fight against AIDS in the southern United States is undermined by state laws and policies that impose ineffective approaches and fuel stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.”

The report says HIV is increasing in 17 southern states at the fastest rate in the nation. It documents practices in the region that HRW says have undercut progress on combating HIV, including:

Refusal of southern states to provide comprehensive sex education in the schools

State laws that impede access to sterile syringes

Criminal penalties for exposing others to HIV.

The report termed as “alarming” the rise of HIV/AIDS in the South, saying that “roughly half” of Americans who die of AIDS live in the South. Those states also have the highest rates of new HIV infections in the country, HRW said. Hardest hit are minorities, particularly African-Americans, whom the report said “bear a disproportionate burden of infection.”

The report found that in 2008 in Mississippi, for example, African-Americans were 37 percent of the population but 76 percent of new cases of HIV. In South Carolina, African-Americans were 28 percent of the population but 72 percent of people living with AIDS.

"The South is the epicenter of HIV infection in the United States, but southern states resist proven methods of HIV prevention and refuse to provide adequate funding for HIV care and services," said Megan McLemore, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This is a public health failure, but also a violation of fundamental human rights for those at risk and infected with HIV."