Racial/ethnic disparities among children with diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection - 34 states, 2004-2007.

Early in the epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in the United States, racial/ethnic disparities were observed in the diagnoses of AIDS among adults and children. Since the early 1990s, the annual number of diagnoses of perinatally acquired AIDS and HIV infection has declined by approximately 90% in the United States as a result of routine HIV screening of pregnant women and the availability of effective interventions to prevent transmission. To characterize the most recent trends in diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection by race/ethnicity, CDC analyzed national HIV surveillance data for the period 2004-2007 from 34 states. This report summarizes the results of those analyses, which indicated that, during 2004-2007, 85% of diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection were in blacks or African Americans (69%) or Hispanics or Latinos (16%). The average annual rate of diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection during 2004-2007 was 12.3 per 100,000 among blacks, 2.1 per 100,000 among Hispanics, and 0.5 per 100,000 among whites. However, from 2004 to 2007, the racial/ethnic disparity narrowed, as the annual rate of diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection for black children decreased from 14.8 to 10.2 per 100,000, and the rate for Hispanic children decreased from 2.9 to 1.7 per 100,000. To further reduce perinatal HIV transmission and racial/ethnic disparities, HIV-infected pregnant women, and particularly black and Hispanic women, should receive timely prenatal care, early antiretroviral treatment, and other recommended interventions.