Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - August 30, 1999
Russ Bynum - The Associated Press
AIDS killed 17,047 people in the United States last year - a decline of 20 percent from 1997. From 1996 to 1997, the drop in deaths was a much more dramatic 42 percent, which health officials attributed to the effectiveness of new drugs.
"As we anticipated, we are now seeing the first signs of a slowing in this trend," said Dr. Helene Gayle, director of HIV prevention for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said today during the National HIV Prevention Conference.
"In a period of only two years, new combination therapies cut the annual level of death in half," she said. "But for the time being it appears that much of the benefit of these new therapies has been realized."
In 1995, 49,351 people died from AIDS in the United States. By 1996, that dropped to 36,792, and the number was down to 21,222 in 1997.
The CDC listed several possible causes for the slowdown in reductions of AIDS deaths.
Most people who know they have HIV are already being treated, Gayle said. Drug resistance among some AIDS patients causes the treatment to fail, and other patients fail to keep up with the complicated juggling of pills they have to take for the drugs to be effective.
"Our worst fears have become a tragic reality," said Steven Fisher of the advocacy group AIDS Action. "AIDS drugs don't work for everyone and aren't a cure for anyone."
New HIV infections in 1998 were estimated at roughly 40,000 - a number that's held steady for the past decade.
The CDC said AIDS continues to kill blacks in higher numbers than other racial groups.
Blacks, who make up about 13 percent of the population, accounted for 49 percent of AIDS deaths in 1998. Thirty-two percent of deaths were among whites and Hispanics made up 18 percent.
"In many ways, the story of how well we do in HIV and AIDS will be told by how well we do with the African-American population," Gayle said.
The three-day conference, organized by the CDC and 17 other agencies, features 2,000 scientists, doctors, researchers and advocates addressing efforts to monitor and prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Sunday, Gayle and others opened the conference by warning against complacency.
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to get people to pay attention to HIV prevention and that in and of itself is a primary reason for this conference," she said.
Since the 1980s, more than 300,000 have died of AIDS. The recent success of some treatments have made some people complacent about the disease.
"Despite a growing complacency about the need for HIV prevention, HIV remains a serious disease that is still very much with us and there is a greater need for HIV prevention today more than ever," she said.
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