ABSTRACT
Most children with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) are poor and with parents who directly or indirectly are involved in intravenous drug use. Children with AIDS require the medical care necessary for any child with a chronic disease involving the suppression of the immune system. The social situation of most children with AIDS complicates their medical care. Because most of these children are both poor and the offspring of parents involved with intravenous drug use, any successful medical care program must involve more than the application of current medical science. If the care of children with AIDS is medically complicated, attention to their social needs and those of their families is even more complicated. As of November 1987, 788 children with AIDS had been reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control; 32 percent of these children live in New York City. New York City is one of the nation's centers of human immunodeficiency virus infection in children.
