More Than 500,000 AIDS Cases Reported in U.S.
The number of AIDS cases diagnosed in the United States since 1981 has passed the half-million mark, with Americans accounting for one out of every nine cases worldwide, federal health officials said Friday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that as of the end of October, a total of 501,310 people had been found to have AIDS. Of those, 62% have died.
“Over half a million people with AIDS really should signify to the American public the ongoing seriousness and magnitude of this epidemic,” said Dr. Patricia Fleming of the CDC’s AIDS surveillance branch.
The CDC said 59,806 AIDS cases have been reported in the United States so far this year.
The World Health Organization estimates that there have been 4.5 million AIDS cases worldwide and that globally there are 18 million adults and 1.5 million children infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.
The cumulative total of U.S. AIDS cases has doubled in the past three years, partly because health officials expanded the definition of AIDS in 1993 to include people with suppressed immune systems, pulmonary tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia and invasive cervical cancer.
The CDC said AIDS “continues to affect blacks and Hispanics disproportionately.”
The rate of AIDS among blacks is 101 per 100,000 and is 51 per 100,000 among Latinos. The rate is 17 per 100,000 among whites, 12 per 100,000 among Native Americans and Alaskan natives, and six per 100,000 among Asians and Pacific Islanders.
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