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QUANTIFYING THE
EPIDEMIC
Between June 1981 and Dec. 31, 1994, 441,528 cases of AIDS in the United States, including 270,870 AIDS-related deaths, were reported to the CDC (CDC, 1995a). AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adults aged 25 to 44 in the United States (CDC, 1995b) (Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Death rates from leading causes of death in persons
aged 25-44 years, United States, 1982-1993
Worldwide, 1,025,073 cases of AIDS were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) through December 1994, an increase of 20 percent since December 1993 (WHO, 1995a) (Figure 2). Allowing for under-diagnosis, incomplete reporting and reporting delay, and based on the available data on HIV infections around the world, the WHO estimates that over 4.5 million AIDS cumulative cases had occurred worldwide by late 1994 and that 19.5 million people worldwide had been infected with HIV since the beginning of the epidemic (WHO, 1995a). By the year 2000, the WHO estimates that 30 to 40 million people will have been infected with HIV and that 10 million people will have developed AIDS (WHO, 1994). The Global AIDS Policy Coalition has developed a considerably higher estimate--perhaps up to 110 million HIV infections and 25 million AIDS cases by the turn of the century (Mann et al., 1992a).
Fig. 2. Cumulative AIDS cases worldwide. AIDS cases reported
to the World Health Organization through December 1994.
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