Monday, April 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Nevada has the highest percentage of prison inmates with AIDS and HIV among the 13 Western states, and health officials are at a loss to explain the reason.
A new report by the U.S. Justice Department says 1.7 percent of all inmates in Nevada had AIDS or the HIV virus in 1994. That's below the national average of 2.3 percent.
But it's more than double the rate of AIDS and HIV cases among California inmates, which was at 0.8 percent.
Randall Todd, chief of the state Bureau of Disease Control and Intervention, said these statistics raise more questions than they do provide answers.
Nevada was one of the first states to test all inmates who entered the system for AIDS. Todd said other states may not be conducting the universal testing but only doing them when health problems arise with an inmate.
"That we should be higher than California raises a question if California tests all inmates or if they test only if there's a reason for it," he said. And there's a difference between states on reporting HIV and AIDS cases, he said.
Todd said he's "surprised" that Utah is second in the West with 1.5 percent of its prison population having the HIV virus or AIDS.
Nevada's rate has fluctuated since 1991 when 2 percent of the inmates were infected. The following year it dropped to 1.8 percent and then rose to 2.6 percent in 1993 and then fell to 1.7 percent in 1994.
The report said there were 89 male HIV cases in Nevada prisons in 1994 and 29 female cases.
New York had the highest percentage of inmates known to be HIV positive at 12.4 percent, followed by Connecticut at 6.6 percent, Rhode Island at 3.8 percent, Maryland at 3.7 percent and New Jersey at 3.6 percent.
The Justice Department report showed a higher percentage of female prisoners are HIV infected compared with male inmates. In Nevada, 6.3 percent of the women have tested positive compared with 1.4 percent of the male convicts.
Todd speculates that women in prison are most likely to be there for drug use or prostitution -- high-risk factors for contracting AIDS or being HIV infected.
Men are traditionally convicted of a wider variety of crimes -- such as burglary or robbery -- which aren't connected to the risk factors for contracting the disease.
State Health Officer Donald Kwalick said the women who end up in prison may have had multiple sex partners, exposing them to a greater risk.
Other health officials, who asked not to be quoted by name, suggest that Nevada has an aggressive policy of sending prostitutes to prison who have been HIV infected.
In other states, it may be a misdemeanor but in Nevada it's a felony.
Nevada's 6.3 percent female HIV cases is more than 60 percent higher than the national average of 3.9 percent. It is the highest in the West, South and Midwest. But there are six states in the Northeast, led by New York's 20.1 percent HIV-infected female inmates, that lead Nevada.
Todd cautions that there is a small number of female HIV-infected cases -- 29 -- so these rates could change quickly.
At the end of 1994, the report said there were 19,762 male inmates and 1,953 female convicts infected with HIV nationwide.
Since 1991, the number of male inmates infected with HIV has increased 22 percent while the number of female inmates infected has shot up 69 percent.
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