The HIV epidemic in the United States continues to grow, even as the number of infected homosexual men has leveled off. The increasing number of children infected results from the infection spreading through the intravenous drug-user population and expanding into the heterosexual population. The new population of infected adults has led to increasing numbers of infected children. HIV infection affects the ability of children to acquire knowledge. The reasons HIV-infected children have more difficulty learning than uninfected children in school are multifaceted.
In the United States, 4,500 children alive have AIDS (AIDS drug, 1997, p. A3). These are children with a full-blown AIDS infection as defined by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The number of children diagnosed with AIDS does not include children who are infected with HIV, the precursor to AIDS. The number of children infected with HIV is suspected to be two to three times the number of reported AIDS cases, but the report by the Presidential Commission on the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus Epidemic says that the number of cases of HIV in children will be 10,000 to 20,000 by 1991 ("Presidential", 1988).
The truth is that no one knows how many children have been infected with HIV; children testing positive for HIV antibodies are not required to be reported to the CDC (Prater, Serna, Sileo, & Katz, 1995, p. 69). The higher numbers appear to be more probable because 3,898 children had been diagnosed with AIDS by 1992 (Foley & Kittleson, 1993, p. 342). As of January 1, 1994, 5,228 pediatric AIDS cases (children under 13) and 1,554 cases in children between 13 and 19 had been diagnosed (Prater, Serna, Sileo, & Katz, 1995, p. 69).
Not all of these children are still alive. The number of children infected with HIV continues to grow as more heterosexual adults are infected with HIV and full-blown AIDS. Ninety-four percent of the children infected with HIV a...