Data Masks Scope of Pediatric AIDS, Health Agency Reports

AIDS is now the ninth-leading cause of death among children 1 to 4 years old and the seventh-leading cause of death among young people age 15 to 24, a federal official said Monday.

Dr. Antonia Novello, deputy director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said that if present trends continue, the disease soon will be the No. 5 killer of Americans from birth to their 24th birthday.

In a report to Health and Human Services Secretary Otis R. Bowen, Novello said present statistics, “however tragic, sorely underestimate the true scope of pediatric AIDS.”

As of Dec. 12, 1,291 cases of AIDS had been reported among infants and children under age 13 and an additional 325 cases in the 13- to 19-year group. Of those, 717 who were under 13 at the time of their diagnosis have already died, along with 174 who were adolescents when diagnosed.

“The official figures include only those children whose condition was reported to the Centers for Disease Control,” she said. “Probably for every child who meets the CDC definition of AIDS, another two to 10 are infected with HIV. It is estimated that by 1991 there will be at least 10,000 to 20,000 HIV-infected children in the United States.”

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, and health officials are growing increasingly concerned that a large majority of those infected eventually will develop AIDS and die.

Novello headed an HHS working group on AIDS among children.

Her report to Bowen said the “problem of HIV infection among adolescents is enormously greater than the official count suggests.”

“In view of the lengthy latency period between infection and symptomatic disease, many of the more than 14,000 cases of AIDS reported in persons in their 20s must surely have been contracted when these people were teen-agers,” she wrote. “The repercussions of HIV infection in adolescents are magnified by the potential of these sexually active young people to become parents themselves, transmitting the virus to yet another generation.”