THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF

AIDS IN EUROPE

78,000 cases of AIDS have been logged among Europe's population of 502 million. As elsewhere, this is the tip of the iceberg, for about 500,000 Europeans are believed to be HIV-positive. The general pattern for the spread of AIDS in Western Europe is similar to that in North America (see card 81), with homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and IV drug users being most affected.

Some theorize that AIDS entered Europe via France through contact with Africans or Haitians. Paris has long been a center of both AIDS infection and AIDS research. It is home to the virologist

Dr. Luc Montagnier (see card 100) and during the 1980s it was where wealthy Americans such as Rock Hudson (see card 24) went to receive experimental antiviral drugs. But in 1992, France was rocked by the trial and convictions of officials who had let blood they knew was contaminated with HIV be used to treat patients with blood disorders. 1200 French hemophiliacs have been infected with HIV and up to 8000 non-hemophiliacs may also be affected.

In Roumania, the Eastern European nation with the highest rate of HIV infection, 2,000 cases of AIDS were recorded by 1992, mostly among infants and ostensible heterosexuals (homosexuality

is illegal there). The tragedy of the "Roumanian AIDS babies," as the media dubbed them, arose under the dictatorship of the late Nicola Ceausescu, who supported the scientifically unsound practice of injecting underweight babies with adult blood samples to promote growth. The blood was not screened and only a small portion was used for each infant, so one adult donor could infect many babies, and thousands of previously healthy children are now HIV-positive. Next Card 80: The Demographics of AIDS IN ASIA

AIDS IN EUROPE