"Activists Call for Expanded Definition of AIDS in Women"

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

"Activists Call for Expanded Definition of AIDS in Women"

Los Angeles Times (12/27/90), P. A5
Cimons, Marlene

Abstract: AIDS activists are now demanding that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) widen its definition of AIDS to include severe gynecological symptoms in women. At a recent two-day conference in Washington and in a class-action suit filed against Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan on behalf of women with HIV, activists have charged that doctors misdiagnose women with AIDS, epidemic statistics are kept artifically low, and funding does not go to services for infected women because of the exclusion. Women do not get treatments, benefits, and social services that they need and many die of AIDS without having been diagnosed, according to ACT UP. CDC officials say the definition, developed for tracking the spread of HIV, includes infections in men and women and does not include less severe, non-life-threatening illnesses. The gynecological infections found in women are not specific to HIV or immune suppression, and changing the definition would be inappropriate and might obscure epidemic trends and hamper forecasting, according to CDC officials.

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