AIDS No Longer A Top 10 Killer

New drugs helped reduced the number of AIDS deaths in the United States by 47 percent last year, dropping the disease from the 10 leading causes of death.

AIDS is now the 14th leading cause of death in the United States, with 5.9 deaths for every 100,000 Americans -- the lowest rate since 1987, when mortality data were first available for the disease, the government reported Wednesday. It had been in the top 10 causes of death since 1990.

The 1997 rate is less than half what it was in 1992 and nearly one-third of the rate in 1995, the peak year.

The data are from the Department of Health and Human Services' annual review of birth and death records, which had other encouraging news: continued drops in infant mortality, births to teen-agers and homicides.

And life expectancy reached a record high, with babies born last year expected to live 76.5 years.

HHS Secretary Donna Shalala said the decline in AIDS deaths was due primarily to the highly effective new combination protease inhibitors. "These figures mean that new treatments have been very effective in extending the lives who already have HIV infection but they do not mean that we have significantly reduced HIV transmission," Shalala said in a statement.

"Our ultimate goal is to prevent the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections that occur each year."

The government data suggest that while AIDS death rates have dropped drastically, there has been no similar decline in the number of new HIV infections, meaning the number of people living with HIV and AIDS is still on the rise.

The report also noted births to both white and black teens dropped steeply, falling 16 percent for whites and 23 percent for blacks between 1991 and 1997.

Written by Laura Meckler
©1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed