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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991                   TAG: 9103290174
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Medium

AIDS-RISK WOMEN DON'T KNOW DANGER

"The point we're trying to make here is that there are some women who do not know what their risk is," said CDC public health adviser Carl Campbell of the federal Centers for Disease Control. "Women need to be worked with more closely in helping to identify what their risk to the infection is."

The Atlanta-based CDC found that women who go to public clinics for treatment of intravenous drug use or sexually transmitted diseases don't acknowledge that they are at risk for AIDS and therefore don't avoid such risks as drug use.

Campbell, who analyzed AIDS tests conducted on 407,556 women in 1989 and 1990, said there is a particular need for public-health programs to make minority women aware of AIDS prevention and risks.

Although only 17 percent of all women in the United States are black or Hispanic, they account for 73 percent of the 15,493 AIDS cases reported among women through 1990, CDC figures show.

In Campbell's study, about 80 percent of the women said they weren't at risk for AIDS. Campbell said 81 percent of blacks, 76 percent of Hispanics and 69 percent of whites reported no risk factors.

But 3.4 percent of blacks, 3.2 percent of Hispanics and almost 1 percent of whites did test positive to the AIDS virus, a total of 8,838 of all the women tested.

At clinics that do only AIDS testing, 3 percent of all the women tested were found to be infected - 6.6 percent of the black women, 6 percent of the Hispanics and 1.2 percent of the whites.

Women who were tested at drug-treatment centers showed an even greater incidence of the virus, 3.7 percent - 6.1 percent of the blacks, 3.8 percent of the Hispanics and 2.1 percent of the whites.