1 MILLION GOT AIDS VIRUS IN 9 MONTHS, WHO REPORTS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992                   TAG: 9202130066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GENEVA                                LENGTH: Medium
1 MILLION GOT AIDS VIRUS IN 9 MONTHS, WHO REPORTS
More than 1 million people contracted the virus that causes AIDS in recent months, 90 percent of them through heterosexual intercourse, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
In a chilling assessment of the spread of the AIDS epidemic, the U.N. health agency predicted the disease will soon become the main cause of premature death in many Western cities and will leave up to 10 million African children orphaned by the end of the decade.
A WHO report on the "Current and Future Dimensions of the HIV-AIDS Pandemic" said by early January, 10-12 million people had caught the human immunodeficiency virus. This was 1 million higher than the previous assessment nine months earlier in April. The new figure included 1 million children.
It can take 10 years or longer for a person infected with HIV to develop AIDS symptoms. Most people diagnosed with AIDS die within a few years.
It said an estimated 2 million cases of AIDS had occurred since the disease became known in the early 1980s - 500,000 more than reported by the U.N. agency in April.
The agency estimated that about 1 million people in the United States have been infected with HIV as of early this year.
"By 1992, an estimated 1.6 million HIV infections may have occurred in Australasia, North America and Western Europe, about two-thirds of these in the United States," it said.
The report reiterated projections that by the year 2000, 30 to 40 million people will have contracted HIV. "In other words, WHO estimates that infections will at best triple and at worst quadruple in just eight years time," it said.
Michael Merson, head of WHO's AIDS division, said an aggressive prevention campaign would save millions of lives.
WHO said even in industrialized countries, where the virus used to be concentrated in the homosexual and drug-using population, there was a growing trend toward heterosexual transmission.
NOTE: SEE MICROFILM FOR ILLUSTRATION

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB