Subject: Spread of AIDS Among Women Poses Challenge to Medical Field
Date: Published: 6/26/86 64 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Spread of AIDS Among Women Poses
   Widening Challenge to Medical Field
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   PARIS -- The spread of AIDS by heterosexual relations and
the increasing numbers of women being infected widen the
already troubling challenge the disease poses to world-wide
medicine, according to scientists at the second International
Conference on AIDS here.
   Among the 22,000 U. S. cases diagnosed so far, 73% are male
homosexuals, and men account for 90% of cases overall.  But
the profile of acquired immune deficiency syndrome as a "gay
disease" is slowly shifting to look more like the disease in
Africa, where men and women are afflicted in equal numbers.
   Dr. James Curran, head of AIDS research at the U. S. 
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said on the closing
day of the conference that 6,800 heterosexuals will have been
diagnosed as having AIDS in the U. S. alone within five years.
   Already, he noted, in certain pockets of the U. S. and
among new military recruits, the proportions of infected men
and women are approaching equality.  "In the Bronx, it already
is 1-to-1, men and women," he said, "and in Miami, it
(eventually) will be."
   "It's happening," confirmed Dr. Margaret Fischl of the
University of Miami (Florida.)  She said her AIDS caseload
last month was 36% female -- double the percentage just one
year ago.  She said drug abuse, and Miami's high proportion of
Haitian immigrants, account for part of this change, but she
stresses the importance of heterosexual transmission.  "You
can't deny it; 8% of our cases are heterosexual transmission,
and our evidence supports that women can spread it as well as
men."
   World-wide cases of AIDS may number as high as 300,000 by
1991, the CDC's Dr. Curran predicted.  Because of irregular
reporting practices, there isn't any precise world-wide tally
of AIDS cases.  However, recent estimates have been between
50,000 and 100,000.  "It's likely to occur in every country of
the world, passed as a (venereal) disease," he said.
   Dr. Pierre Piot, a Belgian AIDS researcher, said that
female prostitutes constitute an ominous reservoir of
infection.  Almost 60% of prostitutes in Nairobi, Kenya, are
infected and presumed infectious, he said.  He also cited
samplings that suggest the infection has attacked as many as
40% of female prostitutes in Miami, 19% in New York, 6% in
Los Angeles and 5% in Seattle.
   Dr. Piot called for "mandatory monitoring" of heterosexual
populations at high risk for the disease, including partners
of AIDS patients, prostitutes and patients with other
sexually transmitted diseases.  Tracing of heterosexual
contacts now occurs in parts of Sweden, and has been
discussed in the U. S., but so far the suggestion has been
rejected by many as an invasion of privacy.

(This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.)