AIDS and Intravenous Drug Use - The Death Toll Of Aids

Since the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic around 1981, a cumulative total of 892,875 adults (including adolescents) have been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States as of the end of 2003. (See Table 9.1.) In the 1981-2003 period, 518,957 people thirteen and older have died of AIDS. (See Table 9.2.) An additional 9,419 children under thirteen were also found to have the disease. (See Table 9.3.) More than five thousand children have died. According to the CDC, for every one hundred persons diagnosed with AIDS, fifty-six have died; for every one hundred children diagnosed, fifty-four have died. The peak in AIDS diagnoses came in 1993 (78,954 persons diagnosed); the peak in deaths came in 1995 (50,876 deaths of adults). Since then both diagnoses and death have been declining, as educational programs have taken hold and curbed unprotected sexual behavior that leads to infection and as treatment programs have been devised to delay the progression of HIV to AIDS. The CDC reports that the peak in children's deaths from AIDS came in 1994, a year ahead of the peak for adults/adolescents.

By Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Age

2003 AIDS rates by age, race, and sex are shown in Table 9.4, and cumulative totals for AIDS cases and AIDS deaths are shown in Table 9.3 and Table 9.2 respectively. According to the CDC, most adults who have died of AIDS have been males (84.2%).

African-Americans and Hispanics were affected well above their share in the total population by the AIDS epidemic. African-Americans had about half of the total AIDS deaths in 2003 but as of the 2000 U.S. Census made up only 12.3% of the total U.S. population. Hispanics had 21.7% of AIDS deaths in 2003, while representing 11.1% of population three years earlier. Whites, with 71.8% of the population in 2000, experienced 26.5% of total AIDS deaths in 2003. Asians/Pacific Islanders were affected at lower rates than their share in total populations; they had 0.5% of 2003 AIDS deaths, compared with 3.9% of the 2000 population. American Indians/Alaska Natives had 0.4% of 2003 AIDS deaths; in 2000, they were 0.7% of the total population.

Of those who died of AIDS in 2003, the largest number were aged thirty-five to forty-four (38.7%) followed by those aged forty-five to fifty-four (33.1%). Together, these two age groups accounted for nearly three quarters of all AIDS deaths in 2003. The population of people dying from AIDS seems to be aging. Only 1,928 people aged twenty-five to thirty-four died of AIDS in 2003 (10.7% of the total), compared to 3,258 in 1999 (17.6%), according to CDC data.