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CHILDREN AND HIV/AIDS
It is estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 children in the U.S. are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Nearly all HIV infections in children result from an HIV-infected pregnant woman passing the virus to her baby either before or during birth. Between 15-30% of infants born to untreated HIV-positive women become infected with the virus. Studies show that AZT treatment can help reduce the rate of HIV transmission from an infected woman to her baby to less than 8%.
Treatment advances offer great hope to people with HIV, but only if those treatments are accessible and acceptable in the context of their lives. The major barrier to identification of women with HIV infection is lack of prenatal care, often associated with illicit drug use.
AIDS is the seventh leading cause of death for children 1-4 years of age in the U.S. However, children with HIV are living longer as a result of better treatments, better care, and better understanding by providers and families about available treatment regimens.
Approximately 30,000 American children have already lost their parents to AIDS; it is estimated that the total number of orphaned children and adolescents will exceed 80,000 in the U.S. by the year 2000.
Worldwide, as many as 10 million children may be infected with HIV, with 5-10 million orphaned by the death of one of their parents due to AIDS within the next three years.
AIDS IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
African-Americans have been disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. Through 1997, CDC had received reports of 230,029 cases of AIDS among African-Americans; although that is 36% of the 641,086 cases reported, African-Americans represent only 13% of the U.S. population.
Approximately 1 in 50 African-American men and 1 in 160 African-American women are believed to be infected with HIV.
For women of color, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is a particularly serious public health issue, as the leading killer of African-American women between the ages of 25 and 44 last year. African-American women represent two thirds of all cases of women with HIV. By the year 2000, Black women will be nearly twenty times more likely than non-Black women to have AIDS.
African-American children with AIDS represented 62% of reported pediatric AIDS cases for 1997.
ABOUT PROTEASE INHIBITORS
Protease inhibitors are antiviral drugs. They interrupt the way HIV uses a healthy cell to make more virus. When HIV enters a healthy cell, its only goal is to make more viruses to infect other healthy cells. It does this by making the cell produce certain proteins the virus can use to copy itself. Two of the proteins used by the virus are reverse transcriptase and protease. The goal of the protease inhibitor is to stop the protease from helping to assemble a new virus.
Protease inhibitors are the most powerful anti-HIV drugs currently available. Although it is unknown how long protease inhibitors will work in a person infected with HIV, studies have shown promising results to date.
(Data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the World Health Organization, the American Association for World Health, the Pediatric AIDS Unit of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, AIDS Treatment Information Service, and the PediAIDS Electronic News Network)
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