Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1987. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Friday, 20 November 1987.
A study at a New York hospital found that 2 percent of women giving birth in early 1987 were infected with HIV, the AIDS virus. Furthermore, 42 percent of the infected women either could not or would not admit to known AIDS risk factors.
Researchers from the State University of New York Health Science Center, reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association, called for AIDS testing to be routinely offered to all pregnant women from high-risk areas.
"This isn't just another group you aren't a part of," said Dr. Howard Minkoff, a co-author of the study. "While I don't want to ring the alarms and say this is the next wave of this epidemic -- I've lost track of what wave we're on now, anyway -- I think it's naive and dangerous to assume there's no risk until it's on our doorstep."
Minkoff and his colleagues studied umbilical cord samples from infants delivered between Dec. 8, 1986, and Jan. 31, 1987, at Kings County Hospital Center, a 1,200-bed facility serving primarily minorities in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn researchers noted that the 2 percent infection rate at Kings was similar to that found in Nairobi, Kenya, though not yet as high as is found in Kinshasa, Zaire, where the rate is 8 percent.
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