AIDS to Pass Traffic as Killer by ’91 : U.S. Study Predicts 179,000 Deaths in Next Five Years

Within five years, more people will die of AIDS than are now killed annually in auto accidents, a report released today by the Public Health Service said.

The government, in an update of its plan for controlling the spread of AIDS, predicted that more than 270,000 people will have been diagnosed with the deadly disease by 1991, and more than 179,000 will have died.

Deaths from AIDS in 1991 alone are predicted at more than 54,000, according to the projections. By comparison, 46,200 people died in auto accidents in 1984, according to the National Safety Council.

The health agency said the figures are based on projections by the Centers for Disease Control. It said the death estimate could be as much as 20% low because of under-reporting of AIDS cases.

Highest Risk Group

The report said more than 70% of AIDS cases will be diagnosed among homosexual or bisexual men, considered the highest risk group. About 25% of the cases will be among drug addicts who use infected needles. Those two figures overlap, the agency noted.

About 9% of the cases will occur among heterosexual men and women, a figure estimated at nearly 7,000 cases, the agency said.

And more than 3,000 cases will be diagnosed in infants and children, the health service said, due to the increased infection among women of child-bearing age.

AIDS also will spread dramatically outside the New York and San Francisco areas where it now is concentrated, the agency said. Those two cities now account for more than 40% of all AIDS cases. But by 1991, more than 80% of the cases will come from other states and localities.

The projections are included in the health agency’s update of its master plan to control the spread of AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Stands by Goals

Despite the numbers in the projection, the agency said it stands by the goals it set last year: to reduce the spread of infection by 1987, to slow the increase in AIDS cases by 1990, and to eliminate the spread of the disease by the year 2000.

AIDS kills by destroying the body’s immune system, leaving it defenseless against a host of other diseases. More than 21,500 cases have been diagnosed since the first case was recognized five years ago this month, the agency said.

“In the past five years, more effective therapies for some of the opportunistic infections that accompany AIDS have been found,” the agency noted, “but no cure for AIDS is yet available.”