The cute little girl playing on the swing set in her backyard in Hampden, seen in news stories on TV and in newspapers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was Maine’s most visible image of the scourge of HIV-AIDS. The little girl, Autum Aquino, grew to be an adult and led a remarkably normal life, considering the disease she carried from birth, having contracted it in her mother’s womb. Autum died April 3 at the age of 23.

If anyone had forgotten about the tragedy that is HIV-AIDS, the death of this vibrant young woman is a sad reminder, and should urge on the work to eradicate this avoidable disease.

Autum’s story illustrates how the disease has spread beyond the narrow demographic groups it first affected. Her father contracted it through illicit intravenous drug use, and then her mother was infected through sexual contact with him. Autum was born HIV-positive.

According to Web sites devoted to fighting HIV-AIDS, an estimated 1 million people in the U.S. live with HIV, and about 40,000 new infections occur each year – 70 percent in men, 30 percent in women. Half of new infections in the U.S. occur in those 25 and younger.

Dr. Dora Anne Mills, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control, said an estimated 1,600 people with HIV are living in Maine; about 500 of them are undiagnosed. HIV numbers are up, she said, in large part because infected people are living longer, thanks to medications. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Maine saw about 130 new HIV diagnoses annually. That dropped to about 30 in the late 1990s, but is creeping back up, with about 60 new diagnoses each year now.

It’s impossible to discuss HIV-AIDS without raising moral issues. Religious groups say sexual abstinence until marriage and refraining from hypodermic drug use are the only guaranteed ways to avoid the disease.

Yet Autum was an innocent victim, and that enabled her to achieve great public awareness and deflect much of the fear and anger that swirled around the disease 20 years ago.

Family and friends described Autum as happy and full of energy, and her life followed typical paths, as she attended Hampden Academy and then St. Joseph College in Standish. She had returned to Bangor recently and was working in a store and sharing an apartment with her fiance. A bacterial sinus infection, which wouldn’t keep most 23-year-olds from missing more than a day or two of work, led to pneumonia for Autum, and with a weakened immune system, her body succumbed.

She lived her brief life in an exemplary way, those who knew her said, and was open about the disease. Her death should reverse complacency about HIV-AIDS , and inspire frank discussions about the risks of drug use and unprotected sex.