As of December 1996, more than 85,000 of the 581,429 people reported with AIDS were women. Two years earlier, the figure was a little over 58,000. In 1996, women accounted for 20 percent of newly reported AIDS cases, more than double a decade earlier. For women between the ages of 25 and 44, AIDS and other HIV-related illnesses are now the fourth leading cause of death. Indeed, though Blacks and Hispanics represent only 21 percent of all American women, in 1995, a staggering 76 percent of women with AIDS were of those two groups.
Heterosexual contact is, in fact, the fastest-rising form of transmission for women everywhere.
At UCLA's Care Clinic, a pleasant area in the medical center where people with HIV and AIDS are treated, the patient population mirrors the national statistics. We're now seeing younger women who've contracted the virus sexually without the tainted blood connection. Johiro has a number of such patients. Another, an African American woman, is certain she was infected by her husband. Two former patients, both Hispanic women in their 20s, have died.