Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 1 Dec 1995
Joanne Kenen / Reuter

Health officials began distributing information to pregnant women on testing for the HIV virus that causes AIDS. The campaign also emphasized positive results of the drug AZT, which can reduce by nearly 70 percent the risk of passing the virus to newborns.

Bilingual pamphlets, videos and announcements will be distributed to women of childbearing age as part of the campaign. "This is something we can do," said President Clinton's top AIDS adviser, Patsy Fleming. "We want to get the message out."

Museums and galleries staged "A Day Without Art" to portray the devastation the disease has wreaked on the artistic community, removing some paintings from walls and draping other works of art with somber black cloth.

In New York, Pablo Picasso's oil portrait of Gertrude Stein and Andy Warhol's "Self-Portrait," were draped in black at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Philadelphia's central JFK Plaza, a landmark "LOVE" sculpture by 1960s artist Robert Indiana was draped with a white cloth emblazoned with "RAGE." At a noon rally in the plaza, readers recited names of area residents who had died of AIDS.

A "United AIDS Tour" was planned in New York's Harlem neighborhood featuring workshops, plays, a carnival and a basketball tournament. In front of New York's City Hall, AIDS activists staged a 24-hour vigil, reading a seemingly endless list of names of those who have died of the disease.

After sundown, more than 100 New York buildings, monuments and bridges plan to darken their lights for 15 minutes as a sign of grief for the losses to AIDS. A "Night Without Light" also will take place in San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, Atlantic City, New Jersey and Las Vegas, where some 20 hotels planned to turn off their marquees and floodlights.

Actor and AIDS activist Richard Gere lashed out at complacent politicians who have failed to fund research programs to help find a cure for the deadly disease.

"I'm kind of angry that we're still doing these things," he told reporters before an awards dinner Thursday, the eve of World AIDS Day. "We've had too many World AIDS Days."

Although several new drugs can prolong the life of AIDS patients and help them ward off some of the the diseases that plague them, a cure or vaccine remain beyond science's grasp.

Nearly a half-million Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS. Almost 300,000 of them have died since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. An estimated 600,000 to 900,000 more are believed to be infected with the HIV virus.

Around the globe, the World Health Organization estimates there have been 4.5 million AIDS cases and 18 million adults and 1.5 million children are infected. AIDS continued to be the leading cause of death in the past year for people under 45 in the United States and Western Europe, the head of the U.N. anti-AIDS program said in New York Friday.

"In the United States and Western Europe, AIDS continued to be the leading cause of death for people under 45 -- a bigger killer than violent crime, which gets far more media attention," Dr Peter Piot, a Belgian physician, told an AIDS Day symposium at U.N. headquarters.

The American Association of Retired Persons released an AIDS Day video on how the disease affects those over the age of 50, who account for one in 10 AIDS patients. "This crisis is touching their lives in many ways and yet there exists little education or assistance focusing on older people," said AARP official Anne Harvey.

Some Clinton administration officials said they feared the Republican-controlled Congress could harm the war on AIDS by cutting funds for anti-drug programs and scaling back Medicaid, a key source of AIDS care for poor children.

"President Clinton and I urge Congrss to provide adequate funding for drug and HIV/AIDS prevention, education and treatment," White House anti-drug adviser Lee Brown said.
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