AIDS IN NORTH AMERICA

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF

AIDS IN NORTH AMERICA

Although the U.S. and Canada are home to an estimated 5.2% of the world's population, the two countries make up about 10% of the estimated 10 million people who carry HIV worldwide.

In the U.S., more than 200,000 people had developed AIDS by late 1992. 90,000 new AIDS cases are expected in 1993, about half of them among Hispanics and African-Americans. The U.S. city with the highest per capita AIDS rate is San Francisco.

The following are 1992 CDC figures on U.S. AIDS infections in men and women, ranked by method of transmission:

homosexual and bisexual sex: 58%,

intravenous drug use: 23%,

homosexual sex combined with IV drug use: 6%, heterosexual sex: 6% (globally the rate is 60%),

blood transfusions: 2%,

treatments for hemophilia and other blood disorders: 1%, other: 4%.

By late 1992, there had been 6,900 AIDS cases in Canada. That year, in a situation reminiscent of France's (see card 79), the Canadian Red Cross was sued for knowingly giving HIV-contaminated blood products to 800 hemophiliacs and 400 surgery patients.

In North America, with its high rate of homosexual sex transmission, men with AIDS outnumber women with AIDS seven to one. But globally 60% of AIDS cases are male, so epidemiologists are convinced the skewed demographics of AIDS in North America will change as HIV spreads to heterosexuals. Projections are that the infection rate for women will pass that for men by the year 2000. Next Card 82: The Demographics of AIDS IN AUSTRALIA