Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. The California Department of Public Health has tracked HIV and AIDS cases officially since 1983. KPBS reporter Alan Ray has some of the numbers for San Diego County.
The state's accounting runs through the end of October. Since the record-keeping began there have been just over 169,000 HIV and AIDS cases statewide. San Diego County has the third highest number of AIDS cases after Los Angeles and San Francisco Counties.
More than half of San Diego's 13,399 AIDS patients have died.
San Diego County also has just over 2,900 HIV cases.
More than 80 percent of San Diego county's AIDS cases were sexually transmitted. Ten percent were the result of intravenous drug use.
Over the last three years, San Diego county has averaged about one new AIDS case per day, and the numbers have trended down. The County Health Department reports 565 cases in 1997, down to 316 cases last year.
