Contributed by Ron Gara| 31 January, 2005 14:33 GMT
Health officials have said that AIDS in infants has nearly been eradicated in the U.S., according to a report in the New York Times. The article says that only a decade ago, the disease "took the lives of hundreds of babies a year and left doctors in despair."Only five babies were born HIV-positive in New York in 2003, versus 321 who had the infection in 1990, the New York Times reports. Nationwide, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with HIV in 1990, but that number has been reduced to just over 200 in recent years, according to health officials.
Wonderful Success Story
"This is a dramatic and wonderful success story," Dr. Vicki Peters, the head of pediatric surveillance for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, told the New York Times.
The dramatic improvement in the U.S. is credited to better drugs, education and testing, which necessitated the cooperation of local communities, governmental agencies, health officials and citizens themselves.
Dire Need Elsewhere
However, even as health officials express satisfaction over the great progress made in one country, they point to the dire need in other parts of the world.
"We have had incredible progress," Dr. Lynne Mofenson told the New York Times. Dr. Mofenson is chief of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal AIDS Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "But if you think about the U.S. and New York and then you think about Africa, it is like a tale of two cities, a tale of two epidemics," she told the paper. |
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