some good news

U.S. Is Close to Eliminating AIDS in Infants

In 1990, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; now, that number has been reduced to a bit more than 200 a year, according to health officials. In New York City, the center of the epidemic, there were 321 newborns infected with H.I.V. in 1990, the year the virus peaked among newborns in the city. In 2003, five babies were born with the virus.

Across the country, mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. has dropped so sharply that public health officials now talk about wiping it out.

but

Much of the developing world continues to be ravaged by AIDS, however. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than two million people died of the disease last year. "We have had incredible progress," said Dr. Lynne Mofenson, the chief of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal AIDS Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health. "But if you think about the U.S. and New York and then you think about Africa, it is like a tale of two cities, a tale of two epidemics."