ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996                  TAG: 9604050097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: Associated Press

SURVEY SAYS PRISONERS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE AIDS

Inmates in the nation's largest jails and prisons are nearly six times more likely than other Americans to have AIDS, the government said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 5,279 such prisoners had AIDS in 1994, or 5.2 cases per 1,000 inmates. In the general adult population, the rate is 0.9 per 1,000.

AIDS deaths among inmates in the nation's largest city and county jails and state and federal prisons totaled 4,588 from the early 1980s to the end of 1994, the CDC said.

Most of the infected prisoners already had AIDS or carried the virus before they entered prison, said Juarlyn Gaiter, a psychologist with the CDC Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention.

``Many prisons are full of IV drug users, people who trade sex for drugs,'' she said.

A few state surveys have shown that only about 0.3 percent of inmates with AIDS caught the virus while in prison, said Ted Hammett, who oversaw the CDC survey.

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