The Dogwood Center, Princeton, NJ, USA

AIDS death rates for black IDUs much higher than for white IDUs

In 1998 in the United States, the AIDS death rate for black injecting drug users (IDUs) was 17 times higher than that for whites.

This black/white ratio was much higher than the black/white ratio for other major diseases.⁽¹⁾

Death rates for major diseases, 1998
Ratio: black to white
AIDS deaths among IDUs	17.2 to 1
Nephritis and related	2.5 to 1
Diabetes	2.4 to 1
Cerebrovascular diseases	1.8 to 1
Other major diseases	Less than 1.6 to 1

(1) The AIDS death rates for injecting drug users are based on unpublished estimates for deaths to injecting drug users in 1998 by race from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and population data from Jennifer Cheeseman, Population Projections of the United States by Age, Sex and Race, and Hispanic Origin: 1995 to 2050, U. S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P25-1130, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996. Table 2. Both the AIDS deaths and population estimates are for persons age 13 and over. Black refers to African Americans excluding Latinos. White refers to whites excluding Latinos.

The death rates for diseases other than AIDS are age-adjusted and for persons of all ages. Black refers to African Americans including Hispanic blacks. White refers to whites including Hispanic whites. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2000. “Deaths: Final Data for 1998,” Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, by Sherry L. Murphy, vol. 48, no. 11, July 24. Table 14.