By Felice Freyer
More than 2,000 Rhode Islanders are living with AIDS, 10 times more than the number in 1993, as drug therapies and earlier diagnosis keep many people alive.
Annual deaths from AIDS have declined sharply, dropping to a dozen or two in recent years, from 200 in 1993.
But the epidemic continues to grow at a steady rate. In each of the past five years, about 50 or 60 new AIDS cases were diagnosed and a little over 100 new HIV infections were reported .
In Rhode Island, AIDS is primarily an illness affecting men in their 30s and 40s, who contracted it through sex with other men or intravenous drug use. Even so, 25 percent of people with AIDS are women and 21 percent of infections occurred through heterosexual contact.