Pittsburgh has the lowest incidence of HIV/AIDS among metropolitan areas with populations of more than 500,000, but the spread of the disease remains a health crisis, especially among the area's minority groups, according to Allegheny County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dixon.

"We continue to see disproportionate numbers in our minority populations," Dr. Dixon said on the eve of today's National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. "The incidence of new cases is up in the range of 2¹/₂ to three times the general makeup of the minority population.

"Fourteen percent of the population in general is minorities. The number of new cases is between 35 and 40 percent minorities."

Those percentages are mirrored nationally in the African-American population -- the reason for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks, who make up 13 percent of the population, account for about half of the more than 1 million Americans living with HIV and half of all people newly diagnosed with HIV infection each year.

In 2005, the rate of HIV diagnosis among African-American males was nearly seven times higher than that of white men. Black women had an HIV diagnosis rate that year of more than 20 times that of white women.

The Southwestern PA AIDS Planning Coalition plans to mark Awareness Day tonight with a dinner and inspirational speech by Bishop Joyce Turner-Keller from 5 to 8 p.m. at Central Outreach Center, 1860 Centre Ave. No seats are left for the affair, but organizers hope her message will go out into the community.

Bishop Turner-Keller is founder of Aspirations, a Baton Rouge, La.-based nonprofit that provides testing for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases along with related services for people with HIV.

Bishop Turner-Keller has AIDS, a disease she contracted years ago when, as a 46-year-old flight attendant, she was raped by a white man who said he was doing so because she had taken a job away from a white woman.

"Before my diagnosis I was a good Christian woman who prayed every day," she told the coalition. "I used to think AIDS was somebody else's house on fire."

Her message tonight is titled "Prevention is Power," a topic Dr. Dixon also addressed when asked about Pittsburgh's HIV/AIDS problem.

"Any single [case] is something that could have been prevented. In that regard it is a crisis in public health," he said. "Any newly diagnosed patient is a failure because the ways to prevent it are well-known. ...

"People have to learn to control their sexual partners," he said. "They have to use barriers [to spreading the disease] like condoms. If they're drug users they shouldn't share needles ... and they shouldn't continue to assume their partner is OK because he or she has no overt symptoms of disease."

Tonight, because of the rising rate of sexually transmitted disease, the local AIDS coalition will ask those in attendance to speak out to educate teens about HIV prevention and to try to enlist their churches, often the heart of the black community, in the fight against the disease. Both are causes near to Bishop Turner-Keller's heart. Her organization has a summer camp where children as young as 8 are taught about AIDS.