Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Tuesday May 19 10:59 AM EDT
Ed Susman, UPI Science News
But, researchers say Tuesday, the epidemic among the poverty-stricken masses of Asia will drive that continent to the lead in numbers of cases in a few years. Dr. Bob Bollinger Jr., of Johns Hopkins University outlines the new and growing figures on the global spread of AIDS at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Atlanta.
Bollinger says better reporting of the disease from southern Africa over the past two years has increased the numbers of AIDS/HIV patients in Africa from 11 million to 21 million.
He says, however, the fastest growing area for AIDS is Asia. Currently about 6 million cases of the disease are reported there, mostly in India where 4 million people have the disease -- the largest number of cases in any country in the world.
Bollinger who worked in one AIDS project in Pune, India, a large city near Bombay, says the survey of patients at one clinic for sexually transmitted diseases reflects the depths of the epidemic in that country.
Of the 9,300 patients seen at the clinic during a six-year period:
-22.9 percent tested HIV positive.
-More than half _ 54.7 percent _ of the female commercial sex workers were HIV positive.
-17.6 percent of women who were monogamous spouses were HIV infected.
-More than 60 percent of the patients at the clinic never used a condom, though condom use decreases the risk of HIV infection by more than 50 percent.
-More than 40 percent of the patients had never heard of HIV or AIDS.
At a nearby pre-natal clinic that delivers about 7,000 babies a year, 4 percent of the women having children are HIV infected. Bollinger says no one has tested their babies to see if they, too, are infected.
Bollinger, an associate professor of infectious disease and international health at Johns Hopkins, says AIDS has left 8.2 million children as orphans. He says the only country with a major AIDS problem that has taken steps to reverse the epidemic is Thailand where the government has spent more per capita than the United States to educate its people about the disease.
Bollinger says the success in Thailand proves "you can increase the use of condoms and you can change people's habits."
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