ABSTRACT
As of December 1998, a total of 8461 children younger than 13 years of age have had a diagnosis of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States. During 1988-1993, before the successful reduction of the transmission rate, from mother to child, through the use of zidovudine during pregnancy, at delivery, and in the neonatal period (1), an estimated 1000-2000 children were infected each year in the United States (2). Worldwide, the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that 460,000 new infections occurred in 1997, and that currently 1.2 million children are living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection or AIDS (ref: UNAIDS Web site). It has been estimated that in 1998 alone, 5.8 million adults and 590,000 children were newly infected with HIV-1 (16,000 new cases per day), and 2.5 million adults and 510,000 children younger than the age of 15 years have died of HIVrelated complications.
