In 1992, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that ten to twelve million adults and one million children worldwide had contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and they estimated that by the twenty-first century, forty million people would be infected. If the current trends continue, however, that estimate will fall far short of actual numbers, which may reach one hundred ten million. Beside people with high-risk behavior such as homosexuals, female sex workers, truck drivers and injection rates have begun to increase m the general population In addition, there appears to be a change in the characteristics of; AIDS victims. In the 1980s, homosexual men in large urban areas?accounted for approximately two thirds of all AIDS cases. Women and children seemed to be on the periphery of the AIDS epidemic.But today almost ninety percent of new adult infections result from heterosexual contact. Consequetly, the rates of exposure and infection are rising for women, with an accompanying. rise in the number of children born to them with HIV. In the twenty-first century it is expected that the majority of AIDS victims will be heterosexual women and their young children.
