The Associated Press - 7 Aug 95

"I was 19 years old, HIV-positive and all alone," said de Jesus, remembering the day she was told that she, too, carried the virus, although she wasn't a drug-taker like her mother.

"I hadn't even begun living and I was waiting to die."

The 22-year-old de Jesus, who helps run a Harlem HIV-AIDS project that emphasizes "living with AIDS," told her story Monday at the opening of a three-day international conference on the disease.

She is among more than 1 million Americans and among more than 19 million men, women and children worldwide who carry the AIDS-causing HIV -- a legacy of rampant infection rates in the 1980s.

The 1990s will see increasing AIDS deaths, but perhaps also containment of the disease through global prevention programs, said J. Brian Atwood, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some 300,000 to 600,000 people are expected to die from AIDS this year. AIDS deaths are projected to hit 1.5 million to 3 million by 2000, when 10 million children could be orphaned by the disease.

AIDS is the No. 1 cause of death for Americans aged 25 through 44.

"These statistics are not someone else's problems," Atwood told the more than 700 AIDS experts at a meeting sponsored by his agency. "If communities wither and nations fail, all of us will pay."

Atwood said the United States and other countries must make a stronger commitment to pay for AIDS prevention and education programs. The U.S. aid agency provides more than half of the money spent on such programs worldwide, with a budget of $121 million this year.

"Our rhetoric at international meetings still surpass the tangible actions of our governments," Atwood said. "Fear and ignorance still play too large a role in our national debates."

Patricia Fleming, director of AIDS policy for the White House, said U.S. AIDS funding has increased 40 percent since President Clinton took office. And the House recently agreed to boost funding for the National Institutes of Health office that deals with the disease.

Additionally, scientists are making progress in preventing AIDS infection of unborn babies and in developing better anti-viral drugs, she said.

"There is reason for hope," said Fleming. "I know we can prevail because we must."

Undersecretary of State Timothy Wirth said dislocations of poor and increasingly unhealthy populations threaten to worsen the AIDS epidemic.

"AIDS is not likely to run its course and subside," he told a State Department briefing. "Without better response strategies, without massive behavioral changes, we're going to continue to see a multiplication of AIDS infections. And we are seeing that around the world."

But Atwood said the tide could turn.

Already, in Thailand, increased condom use and availability of anti-viral drugs have resulted in a 79 percent decrease in reported sexually transmitted diseases since 1989, he said. He also cited increased condom use in at-risk countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya, where such protection is credited with preventing an estimated 110,000 HIV infections since 1989.

"If the 1990s are the decade of AIDS mortality, they can also be the decade of containment, the high-water mark for the HIV epidemic, the beginning of the end of this epidemic," Atwood said.

Copyright 1995/The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.

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Copyright © 1995 - Associated Press. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the AP Permissions Desk.

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