By the end of 1998, 114,000 women had AIDS or had already died from it.  Many thousands more were infected with HIV. 

African American and Latina women account for three quarters of all AIDS cases among women.⁽¹⁾  In 1998, the AIDS rate among African American women was 22 times that of white women.  The AIDS rate among Latinas was 7 times that of white women.⁽²⁾

In 1997, among women age 25 to 44, AIDS was the second leading cause of death for African American women, the third leading cause of death for Latinas and the ninth leading cause of death for white woman.⁽³⁾

The orphans

As women become infected and die of AIDS, they leave children behind.  In 1998, there were 67,000 American children under the age of 18, mostly children of color, who had lost their mothers to the AIDS epidemic.  More than half these children were 12 or younger.⁽⁴⁾ 

Most of these orphans were not infected with HIV.  Some were born before their mothers became HIV-positive.  Others were born free of HIV, even though they were born after their mothers were infected.

Throughout the period of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the majority of babies born to mothers with HIV have not been born infected with HIV.  In the absence of any medical treatment, about 75 out of 100 infants of HIV-infected mothers are born free of HIV.  Given appropriate medical treatment during pregnancy and birth, an infant's chance of being born free of HIV disease rises to more than 90 in 100.⁽⁵⁾ 

We need to make sure that every pregnant woman is given the opportunity to have an HIV test, so that she and her baby can have the best AIDS prevention treatment available.  But prevention of AIDS among newborns is not enough.  Children need their parents.  We must do everything we can to prevent the spread of AIDS to mothers and fathers in the first place.  

To save the lives of women and men and preserve families, we need to increase condom use, expand medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, expand drug treatment, expand access to sterile needles, and end racial profiling. 

Footnotes

(1) CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report. U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through June 1999. Midyear edition. Vol. 11. No. 1.  Page 18.

(2) Based on estimated AIDS incidence for women ages 13 and over in 1998 and  population data for U.S. women ages 13 and over in 1997 and population data for Puerto Rican females of all ages for 1998.  AIDS data from Table 21 of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report. U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through June 1999. Midyear Edition.  Population data from U.S. Census.

(3) Table 9. D.L. Hoyert, K.D. Kochanek, and S.L. Murphy. Deaths: Final Data for 1997. National Vital Statistics Reports. Vol. 47 no.19. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 1999.

(4) The estimate takes into account the deaths to AIDS-infected children, as well as other child deaths; so the estimate refers only to children alive in 1998.  Personal communication from David Michaels based on his article, "Estimates of the Number of Motherless Youth Orphaned by AIDS in the United States," Journal of the American Medical Association,  December 23/30, 1992, vol. 268, no. 24.  UNAIDS reported an estimate of 70,000 orphans for the United States for 1997.  UNAIDS, Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic,  New York City: UNAIDS, June 1998, p. 66.

(5) E.M. Connor, R.S. Sperling, R. Gelber, et al.,  "Reduction of Maternal-Infant Transmission of  Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 With Zidovudine Treatment,"  New England Journal of Medicine,  1994,  vol. 331,  pp. 1173-80.

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