US close to eliminating mother-to-child HIV infections

THE US is close to eliminating AIDS among infants, it emerged yesterday.

Some 2,000 US babies were born with the HIV virus in 1990, but that figure has been reduced to around 200, health officials told the New York Times.

In New York City, once the centre of the epidemic, the figure has dropped from 321 in 1990 to just five in 2003, it reports.