2. Health Emergency:
The Spread of AIDS Among Latinos
Who Inject Drugs

Some 4,500 Latinos who inject drugs are becoming infected with HIV each year.(1)  As the years pass, a number of them may well stop injecting drugs, but the HIV/AIDS disease will stay with them. 

The number of current and former Latino injecting drug users living with AIDS is increasing.  Between 1994 and 1998, the number of Latinos infected through use of a contaminated needle and living with AIDS increased by over 40 percent.(2)  (See Chart 2.)   

Additional thousands of Latinos are living with HIV, infected through a dirty needle, but they have not progressed to AIDS.  Some of those who are HIV positive are aware of their illness, others are not.(3) 

With improved treatment, AIDS deaths among Latinos infected through use of infected needles have been falling since1995. (See Chart 2.) 

But AIDS deaths are still a serious problem.  In 1998, AIDS was the fourth leading cause of death among Latinos between the ages of 25 and 44.(4)  Half of those deaths were caused by injections with contaminated needles.(5)

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has fallen more harshly upon Latinos than on whites who inject drugs.  Among those who inject drugs, Latinos are at least one and a half times as likely as whites to get AIDS.  The true figure could be substantially higher.(6)

The AIDS epidemic among Latinos infected through contaminated needles does not stop with them.  From them, the AIDS epidemic spreads outward to non-drug-injecting wives, husbands and lovers and then to newborn babies.

Puerto Ricans living on the island of Puerto Rico and in the United States have a higher incidence of injection-related AIDS than do other Latino groups living in the United States.(7)

Impact of migration

Migration between the United States and Central and South America is affecting the spread of HIV/AIDS as well as the statistics on HIV/AIDS in a variety of ways.  For example, it is possible that the number of Latinos with HIV is understated because illegal immigrants fear any official contact, including HIV testing.  Latino AIDS deaths might be understated in U.S. statistics because some migrants, after becoming HIV infected in the United States, return home to be cared for by relatives before they die.

It is also possible that some men, migrating to the United States in search of work and isolated from their families, start injecting drugs; then, because of the absence of clean needles, they become infected with HIV and ultimately carry the AIDS epidemic to their wives back home.  

Footnotes

(1) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are 40,000 new HIV infections every year. CDC, “Guidelines for National Human Immunodeficiency Virus Case Surveillance, Including Monitoring for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1999, vol. 48, No. RR-13, page 19.  Our best estimate is that half of all new HIV infections are occurring among injecting drug users.  See Scott D. Holmberg, “The Estimated Prevalence and Incidence of HIV in 96 Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas, American Journal of Public Health, May 1996, vol. 86, no. 5, pages 642-654. The breakdown of the 20,000 new infections among injecting drug users by race is based on the distribution of new AIDS cases by race for 1999.  See CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Cases Reported Through December 1999, vol. 11, no. 2, tables 9 and 11. 

(2) Excludes heterosexual partners of IDUs. Unpublished data from the CDC. Definitions are the same as in CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Cases Reported Through December 1999, vol. 11, no. 2, tables 26-31.

(3) Data from emergency departments in hospitals in areas where the prevalence of HIV infection is high indicate that half of infected persons are unaware of their HIV infection.  CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “Anonymous or Confidential HIV Counseling and Voluntary Testing in Federally Funded Testing Sites – United States, 1995-1997,” June 25, 1999, vol. 48, no. 4, pages 509-513.

(4) CDC, “Deaths: Final Data for 1998,” National Vital Statistics Reports, Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, by Sherry L. Murphy, vol. 48, no. 11, July 24, 2000.  

(5) For Latinos, this estimate is based on the number of IDUs and MSM living with AIDS plus 41 percent of the number living with AIDS exposed through heterosexual sex in 1998 as taken from a special tabulation from the CDC.  The “41 percent” for those exposed through heterosexual sex with an IDU is derived from the distribution of cumulative AIDS cases among Latinos reported in CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Cases Reported Through December 1998, vol. 10, no. 2.

(6) The estimate of 1.5 to 1 is derived from a study of injecting drug users in drug treatment, done in 1991-92. CDC, National HIV Serosurveillance Summary, Results Through 1992, vol. 3, page 19.  Based on a comparison in heroin use and needle use in the past year (3-year average for 1996 - 1998) and AIDS cases among injecting drug users by race/ethnicity for 1998, the difference between the two groups would be even greater, with Latinos who inject drugs about four times as likely as whites to get AIDS.  The drug use data are from the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse. The AIDS data are unpublished data from the CDC.  

(7) CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Cases Reported Through December 1999.  vol. 11, no. 2, table 20.

For a list of other materials used on this website, see References.