Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune (CT) - SUNDAY September 18, 1988 Edition: CITY EDITION Section: NEWS Page: 12 Word Count: 395
Michael L. Millenson
James Curran, director of the AIDS program at the federal Centers for Disease Control, added that counseling for women who have the AIDS virus is so inadequate that many already are pregnant with a second or third child before they find out they are infected.
"It is a national tragedy," Curran said.
He called for physicians and hospitals that serve high-risk areas to undertake outreach programs to make family-planning services available to infected women. Those women most frequently are blacks or Hispanics who inject drugs intravenously or who are having sexual relations with a drug user.
"Why don't we find them during their first pregnancy?" Curran said in an interview after a speech to an AIDS conference in Chicago. "This is probably the worst neonatal infection possible. There's no other infection where the mother dies."
Children born to mothers infected with the AIDS virus have about a 50 percent chance of being infected themselves with the fatal disease.
Curran said pregnant women infected with the AIDS virus should be offered the option of an abortion and should be counseled to avoid another pregnancy.
Although Chicago figures are not available, Curran said the rate of infection among pregnant women here is likely to be similar to that in Boston, where one in 500 pregnant women have been found to be infected with the virus. However, the level reaches one in 50 women, or 2 percent, at some hospitals serving a large number of the poor.
The highest known overall infection rate for pregnant women has been in New York City and in San Juan, Puerto Rico, both with 2 percent rates. Curran said both cities have relatively high percentages of intravenous drug abusers.
The Centers for Disease Control is conducting random testing in 30 metropolitan areas to better estimate what percentage of the U.S. population is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Since June, 1981, there have been more than 73,000 cases of AIDS reported in the United States, resulting in more than 40,000 deaths. More than 23,000 new AIDS cases have been reported in the last 12 months, Curran said.
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