ABSTRACT
Fifteen years later, in 1996, as the proportion of women among AIDS cases continues to rise from 6% in 1984 to 19% in 1995 (Figure 1), the vast majority of women with AIDS in the United States are still poor women of color (Table 1 ) of whom 75% were recorded as non-Hispanic black or Hispanic women (25). By the end of 1995, a total of 71,818 women with AIDS had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As of 1995, the estimated cumulative incidence in AIDS diagnoses was 12.4/100,000 women. One year earlier, in 1994, HIV infection supplanted heart disease as the third leading cause of death for women age 25 to 44, following cancer and unintentional injuries (26). Among black women in this age group, however, HIV infection ranks as the leading cause of death, accounting for over a fifth of deaths each year since 1993. In 1994, the death rate due to HIV among white women (including white Hispanic women) was 5.7 per 100,000, whereas it was over nine times higher among black women (including black Hispanic women) (51.2 deaths per
Table 1 Cumulative AIDS cases among women and incidence rate of AIDS in 1995 by race/ethnicity
Race/ethnicity Cumulative
number Among women
% 1995 new diagnoses per 100,000 woman-years
Black, not Hispanic 39,270 54.7 119.7 Hispanic 14,703 20.5 61.9 Asian/Pacific Islander 367 0.5 7.8 American Indian/Alaska Native 197 0.3 16.5 White, not Hispanic 17,187 24.0 18.5 Total 71,724 100.0 34.1 Source: CDC, Reference 25.
