Federal Officials Will Consider Expanding Definition of AIDS

The federal Centers for Disease Control said Wednesday that it will consider redefining AIDS to include illnesses peculiar to women.

Aggressive cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease and yeast infections kill women infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, even though they are never counted as AIDS patients, critics said at a public meeting.

“How long will women continue to die, literally on the streets?” said Wendi Alexis Modeste of Syracuse, N.Y., who has the HIV virus. “I and my sisters will be a visible and vocal lesion in the side of the CDC until we are treated equally.”

Dr. James Curran, deputy director of the CDC’s AIDS division, defended the way the CDC developed its current definition, but he said the agency would reconsider that position using data presented Wednesday.

The 23 illnesses the CDC now considers to be AIDS symptoms include pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma, a type of cancer.

Currently, HIV patients are told they have AIDS when they get one or more of the 23 indicators.

The CDC, which called Wednesday’s meeting, has proposed revising that definition to include HIV-infected people whose level of the body’s master immune cells, called CD4 cells, dips to 200 per cubic millimeter, or a fifth the level of a healthy person.

But other AIDS activists say the CDC proposal isn’t enough.

The coalition of women from the American Civil Liberties Union, the AIDS activist group ACT UP and other groups said cervical cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis and recurrent bacterial pneumonia infect HIV patients and kill them long before their CD4 level dips to 200 cells per cubic millimeter.