re Latino or African American (Taylor-Brown & Garcia, 1995, p. 14). The majority of these children have at least on parent who is a drug abuser and infected with the HIV virus.
Under-reporting is also suspected because HIV and AIDS progress differently in children than in adults. Early signs of HIV infection found in infants and children include the following:
failure to thrive and weight loss, chronic and reoccurring diarrhea, persistent or recurrent fever, generalized lymphadenopathy, and persistent and severe oral fungus infection. Other common findings include recurrent bacterial infections, encephalopathy and lymphoid interstitial pneumonitis. Involvement of the heart, liver, kidney and skin have also been described (Hutchings, 1988, p. 6).
Opportunistic infections increase as the infection progresses. Between 78 percent and 93 percent of all children with HIV infection develop some form of central nervous system dysfunction (Prater, Serna, Sileo, & Katz, 1995, p. 69).
These signs are different from the indications of HIV and AIDS found in adults. In adults with HIV and AIDS, Kaposi's sarcoma and B cell lymphoma often occur; these infections rarely occur in children. In adults and teenagers who become infected with HIV, the time between infection and the development of AIDS averages between 8 and 12 years. For children infected perinatally with the virus, symptoms can develop within 3 months to 6 months (Prater, Serna, Sileo, & Katz, 1995, p. 69). The average age of death for these children is between 6 and 8, although some with mild symptoms reach adolescence. The number of black children younger than 4 dying from HIV in New York City and New Jersey was surpassed only by accidental death (Colson & Carlson, 1993, p. 264-265).
Current treatment for children with HIV or AIDS includes the drug AZT (zidovudine
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