Hector was working hard in class to please his immigrant parents when the 17-year-old was struck down with a fever. Unable to keep food or liquids down, he spent two weeks on the couch of his family home in the Bronx. It took several doctors and numerous tests before blood work indicated he had HIV. His viral load had soared to near-fatal levels. Exhausted, lying in a hospital bed, he simultaneously had to confront his diagnosis and the question of whether to tell his parents he was gay and sexually active.

“I thought: let me just die,’” Hector, who did not want his real name public, told the Guardian. “Let me just close my eyes and hear the beep. “Then, when my mom came in, it was: let me jump out the window.”

There has been immense progress in curbing the HIV/Aids epidemic in the US, but clinicians fear Hector and Latino youngsters like him are being left behind.

New HIV diagnoses among Latinos were concentrated primarily in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Illinois and Puerto Rico, according to the CDC. They were also concentrated in the Bronx – even though young Latinos there do not show any less safe sexual behaviors than their non-Latino peers.

Compared to national averages, Bronx youngsters are less sexually active, have had fewer lifetime sexual partners and are more likely to have been tested for HIV, according to the CDC. But compared with the four other New York City boroughs, the Bronx has the worst poverty, housing instability, life expectancy and exposure to community violence.Read more via the Guardian