Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - July 14, 2002
Compiled by Charles Madigan and Theresa Walla of the Perspective section
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported at a conference in Spain that after years of warnings and detailed information to the public about sexual practices and the risks of injected drugs, the vast majority of young gay and bisexual men in the U.S. who have the AIDS virus do not know it.
The United Nations conference also heard that the number of children orphaned by AIDS has climbed from 1 million in 1991 to 13.4 million this year and is expected to double by 2010.
Among gay men age 15 to 29 who were studied by the CDC, 90 percent of blacks and 70 percent of Hispanics were unaware they carried the virus, along with 60 percent of whites in the same age groups. Most of the infected men thought they were at low risk despite having engaged in frequent high-risk sex.
The news was no better in Chicago, where the City Council's Health Committee was told that 67 percent of all new cases in 2000 involved African-Americans. Latinos accounted for 15 percent of the new cases. An estimated 28,000 people in Chicago are living with HIV and AIDS.
In another AIDS story, Chicagoan Nikko Briteramos, 18, a freshman at Si Tanka-Huron University in Huron, S.D., pleaded guilty to intentionally exposing his girlfriend to the virus. Under South Dakota law, it is illegal for those carrying the AIDS virus to have sex without informing their partners of it.
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