HEALTH : Heterosexual AIDS Rate Rises
AIDS appears to be spreading fastest among heterosexuals and in small towns, but homosexual men and drug users in big cities still account for the vast majority of cases, officials said today.
The national Centers for Disease Control said the number of acquired immune deficiency syndrome cases transmitted through heterosexual contact increased 27% between 1988 and 1989.
“Most of the heterosexual cases involve heterosexual contact with someone doing intravenous drugs,” said Dr. Ruth Berkelman, chief of the AIDS Surveillance Branch of the CDC.
The total number of reported AIDS cases in the United States jumped 9%--from 32,196 to 35,238 cases--between 1988 and 1989, the CDC said in an annual report published in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
In 1988, 1,229 people acquired the disease through heterosexual contact, compared to 1,562 in 1989, the report said.
Though the rate of increase was higher for the heterosexual group compared to the homosexual or drug-use community, the number of cases in the category still only represented 4.4% of the total number of 1989 cases.
Homosexuals and bisexuals constituted 55.8% of the 1989 cases, but the increase in that group amounted to only 8% between 1988 and 1989.
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