The Dogwood Center, Princeton, NJ, USA

The women most affected by the AIDS epidemic are current and former injecting drug users and women exposed to HIV through heterosexual sex. Many women infected heterosexually are infected through sex with a man who acquired AIDS through injecting drugs.⁽¹⁾

HIV prevention for women

Between 1996 and 2000, the number of women living with drug-related AIDS increased over 35 percent.⁽²⁾

African American and Latina women have been hardest hit by the drug-related AIDS epidemic. They accounted for over three quarters of all drug-related AIDS cases among women through 2000.⁽³⁾

	The crisis for African American women
	The crisis for Latinas

By 1998, there were 67,000 American children, mostly children of color, who had lost their mothers to the AIDS epidemic.⁽⁴⁾

	AIDS orphans
	Infants with HIV

States with the highest AIDS rates among women

A report: SAVING WOMEN'S LIVES

(1) Through the end of 2000, 80 percent of women with AIDS infected through heterosexual sex (for whom the exposure group is known) were infected through sex with a man who injected drugs. As the HIV/AIDS epidemic progresses, more and more women do not know the exposure group of their heterosexual partner. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2000. HIV/AIDS surveillance report. U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1999. vol. 12, no.2. Tables 23.

(3) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2000. HIV/AIDS surveillance report. U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 2000. vol. 12, no.2. Table 23.

(4) The estimate takes into account the deaths to AIDS-infected children, 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 estimates that, by the end of 1999, 70,000 U.S. children under the age of 15 had lost their mother or both parents to AIDS. This estimate covers the entire period of the epidemic in the U.S., so some of the orphaned children included in the cumulative total are no longer alive; others are no longer under age 15. See UNAIDS. 2000. Global estimates of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as of end 1999. June. Table of country-specific HIV/AIDS estimates and data.