AIDS on the Rise in Texas

The rate of deaths from AIDS in Texas climbed in 1999 and 2000, according to the Texas Department of Health. A disproportionately high death rate among blacks with AIDS is also being reported. The AIDS epidemic, now 20 years old, has killed 31,446 Texans. Worldwide, 21.8 people million have died since 1981. Death rates will continue to creep back up without new treatments, more effective prevention programs and stronger adherence to medication regimens, health experts say. "We need a cure," said Dr. Gary Werntz, medical director of the David Powell Clinic, Austin's HIV/AIDS clinic. "I want to go out of business."

Werntz and other public health officials said they expected the virus eventually to become resistant to some of the drugs that produced a sharp decline in deaths in the mid- to late-1990s. Werntz is now noticing that some of his patients are no longer benefiting from the drugs and are reverting to the condition they were in before the medicines appeared on the scene. More drug abusers, poor people and minorities are being exposed to HIV and are dying, he said. Almost a third of the AIDS deaths since 1993 were blacks, who make up less than 12 percent of the state's population, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

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