The St. Joseph City Council has agreed to enter into a contract with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

The contract would provide $138,000 toward providing HIV and AIDS related services here. The agreement comes in light of some alarming new statistics about HIV and AIDS released this week.

Previously, 40,000 new cases of the HIV virus were diagnosed in the U.S. each year. That number has now been bumped up to 55,000 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Buchanan County numbers have also been on the rise since 2006. According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, last year, five new cases of HIV were diagnosed along with one new case of AIDS. That's on top of 28 people already living with the virus and 34 living with AIDS.

Buchanan County Health Educator, Mitzi Teliczan, says many of those cases are living here in St. Joseph. The Buchanan County Health Department does provide free HIV tests with same-day results as well as other STD testing.

For more statistics, click here.