The Associated Press - Wednesday, Sept. 29, 1999
Michelle Faul, Associated Press Writer

In some American nations, up to 15 percent of AIDS patients are children infected by their mothers and born with the disease, said Dr. Fernando Zacarias, director of the Pan American Health Organization's AIDS program said.

Trinidad's health minister, Hamza Rafeeq, noted that most male victims in Trinidad were aged 40-50 and most female ones 15-25, suggesting that "older men are having sex with young girls and infecting more than one of them."

According to a report to the annual meeting of PAHO, the Western Hemisphere suffers one of the world's highest rates of HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. PAHO estimates that 1.6 million people are living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean and close to 1 million in the United States.

Rates of infection range from about 1 in 200 to 1 in 50 in the Caribbean, the hardest-hit area in the world after sub-Saharan Africa.

Zacarias said the Americas have to wake up to the size of the AIDS epidemic before it reaches that of Africa, where it is ravaging societies and has caused a drop in food production.

Originally associated with homosexual men and intravenous drug users, in recent years the AIDS epidemic has shifted to younger people, and from middle-class victims to poor and illiterate populations with little or no access to health services, Zacarias said.

His report generated the most intense discussion so far at PAHO's five-day conference of more than 30 health ministers, which ends Friday. Several ministers said their countries cannot afford to treat AIDS patients and urged PAHO to find ways to lower the cost of medication. Chile's health minister, Alex Figueroa Munoz, suggested that the region's governments consider joining together to buy drugs in bulk.

Brazil was the only country to report that it provides free of charge the antiretroviral therapy that can keep AIDS victims alive. Some 70,000 people are infected with the virus in the South American country of 170 million people.

Trinidad and Tobago, on the other hand, cannot afford to treat AIDS at all, Rafeeq told the conference.

"It is projected that the financial impact of HIV-AIDS alone could absorb our entire health budget for the year 2000," he said. The budget is nearly $160 million. PAHO estimates that it costs up to $15,000 a year to treat one AIDS patient.

In January, Trinidad will start providing free treatment to pregnant AIDS victims to counter the increasing number of infected newborn babies. Researchers estimate that 400 of the 20,000 babies born in Trinidad last year were infected with the AIDS virus, Rafeeq said.
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