HIV/AIDS Among Latinos, 2001
" More than 76,000 Latinos living in the United States and Puerto Rico had injection-related AIDS or had already died from it by the end of 2001. Thousands more were infected with the HIV virus.
" The HIV/AIDS epidemic has fallen more harshly upon Latinos than on whites who inject drugs. Among those who inject drugs, Latinos are at least one and a half times as likely as whites to get AIDS.
" In 2000, with all the advances in AIDS treatment, AIDS was still among the top five leading causes of death for Latinos aged 25-54. More than half of those deaths were caused by contaminated needles."
Dawn Day, Ph.D., Health Emergency 2003: The Spread of Drug-Related AIDS and Hepatitis C Among African Americans and Latinos (The Dogwood Center: Princeton, NJ, 2002), p. i.