Southland / A Roundup of Southern California News : High AIDS Risk Women Targeted

Thousands of women at high risk of contracting AIDS--prostitutes and women who have sex with intravenous drug users or bisexual men--are the target of a federally funded $3.4-million awareness program planned for Los Angeles, Phoenix and Boston.

Project director Sheila Namir of the California School of Professional Psychology warned that unless preventive action is taken, AIDS may ultimately become the primary cause of death among all women of child-bearing age. “Despite recent information, a commonly held myth is that AIDS is a disease of gay men and drug addicts,” Namir told a news conference recently. “In reality, we know that AIDS is the leading cause of death among women aged 25 to 28 in New York City.”

Namir said that 7% of the nation’s current 45,000 AIDS patients--about 3,150 cases--are women, and present indications are that about 27,000 women could be victims of the disease by 1991. “We know that in this country 28% of women with AIDS contracted it through heterosexual contact. And that 30% of the women in Los Angeles who have AIDS contracted it that way,” Namir said.

“We also know, and this is most discouraging, that 11% of women nationwide and 18% in Los Angeles who have AIDS do not even know how they contracted it.”