Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 11, 1990                   TAG: 9007110302
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

YOUNG WOMEN'S AIDS DEATH RATE SOARS

Because women who have the virus are the major source of infection for infants, the trends portend disastrous consequences for thousands of children, say researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control.

"As the number of pediatric cases increases the medical and social costs will be staggering," the researchers said in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Babies infected with the AIDS virus cost the taxpayer-funded Medicaid system $18,000 to $42,000 a year each, they noted.

Among women ages 15 to 44, deaths from AIDS soared from 18 in 1980 to 1,430 in 1988, the most recent year for which national statistics are available, the researchers said.

The death rate quadrupled from 1985 to 1988, when AIDS deaths represented 3 percent of all deaths for women in that age group, the researchers said.

Among black women ages 15 to 44, AIDS was the leading cause of death in New York and New Jersey, said lead author Susan Y. Chu, a CDC epidemiologist. The disease killed 40.7 per 100,000 in New Jersey and 29.5 per 100,000 in New York in 1987, the most recent year for which regional statistics are available, the researchers said.

"That to me is remarkable, because it exceeds the rates of heart disease and cancer, as well as accidents," Chu said in a telephone interview from Atlanta.

Three-quarters of women with AIDS-virus infections get them from using intravenous drugs or having sex with intravenous drug users, Chu said. Since it typically takes 10 years after infection for AIDS to develop, current statistics represent infections from years ago, she said.

In 1989, there were 2,825 new cases of AIDS among women of reproductive age, the researchers said.

Dr. Howard Minkoff, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, called the findings "overwhelming, worrisome and troubling."

Even more troubling, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday, is the attitude of white, middle-class Americans whose reaction to such reports is, " `It's still not us.' "

"The pocketbook issues are already there for all of us," said Minkoff, who works with pregnant women infected with the AIDS virus and says 2,000 such women will bear infected babies in the United States this year. "The human concerns should assume a higher priority than the financial."

The report elaborates on findings Chu released in November indicating AIDS had become the eighth-leading cause of death among U.S. reproductive-age women, ahead of diabetes, influenza and pneumonia.

"What happened to men with AIDS in 1984 and 1985 is happening to women now," Chu said in November. "And it's getting worse."

The death rate for black women - 10.3 per 100,000 - was nine times the rate for white women, the report said.