President Bush vowed to spend $15 billion dollars over the next five years in order to stop the spread of AIDS and HIV, and to find cures for this deadly disease.

In 2003, around $1.5 billion was spent on funding for this disease. The number for the 2004 budget will be around $2 billion dollars. The efforts are still ramping up to handle the research and education necessary to reach these goals.

According to the CDC, it appears that 1993 was the peak year in the US for new cases, with 80,010 new cases. Massive amounts of education and media attention caused the rates to drop steadily over the next 10 years. By 1998 the cases were down to 48,000 and in 2001 the new cases had dropped to 41,227.

However, the latest figures released for 2002 has a slight rise - 42,136 cases. Many believe that with AIDS being out of the limelight and more medicines being available, people are not being as cautious about safe sex and risking the odds of contracting the disease. The rise seems to be mainly amongst gay men.

Currently around 950,000 Americans are infected with the AIDS/HIV virus, but only 25% of those people realize that they are infected.