What to Do About AIDS
People who contract acquired immune-deficiency syndrome know that they have a terminal illness. About 80% of all patients with AIDS have died within two years of diagnosis. Awful as that prognosis is, it is made worse by the fact that, unlike many other terminal illnesses, AIDS is contagious. As a result, many people are frightened to be near AIDS patients, though there is little risk of contagion except through intimate sexual contact or blood transfusion. There is no evidence that the disease can be spread through casual contact.
Nonetheless, many people with AIDS lose their jobs and friends, and some are thrown out of their homes by frightened landlords. It is a tragic byproduct of a tragic epidemic that is getting worse, not better. AIDS patients find themselves shunned as lepers. They need and have great difficulty getting emotional support, counseling, in-home help, transportation, dental care, recreation and, without jobs, general financial assistance. “They need a very strong support system because they’re outcasts,” says Bill Misenhimer, director of the AIDS Project LA, which attempts to provide many of these services.
To date, about 900 cases of AIDS have been diagnosed in Los Angeles County, and the number continues to grow. While most of the victims so far have been homosexual or bisexual men, health professionals throughout the country are now reporting AIDS cases in a growing number of heterosexuals, and the disease is expected to follow the same course in the general population as it has among gay men. Unlike most terminally ill people, who tend to be old, people with AIDS tend to be young, a group unused to death and dying.
Yet Los Angeles city and county have been sluggish in responding to this health crisis. San Francisco, which has been much harder hit by AIDS and is thus more aware of it, is spending more than $4 million this year on public education programs and on social services for people with AIDS. In Los Angeles, public agencies are spending less than $1 million, excluding direct hospital costs.
The federal government supports medical research on AIDS, and the state of California spends about $3 million a year--largely through the University of California--in the hope of coming up with treatment that can cure or prevent the disease. But no one expects to have a vaccine or a cure in the foreseeable future. At the moment, the best preventive action is public education, which is left to local communities.
Educational materials telling all people that they are at risk and what protections to take need to be produced and widely distributed. Health professionals, including nurses and ambulance crews, need to be made aware that they are at no greater risk from AIDS patients than they are from hepatitis patients. There need to be campaigns directed at the very high risk groups and at the general public, telling them the facts about contagion and AIDS prevention. This is an epidemic that must not be swept under the rug because of embarrassment over its sexual link or because of hostility to the primary group of victims.
In addition to protecting the population at large, more needs to be done for people who already have the disease. The AIDS Project and the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center should receive more public money to support their educational and social activities. More needs to be done than is currently being done. Skilled nursing facilities in Los Angeles County say that they cannot accommodate AIDS patients because of the nature of the care that they need. The two hospice facilities in the county do not accept patients on Medi-Cal, thereby leaving the indigent without in-bed care in the final stages of their illness.
If you don’t already know someone with AIDS, you may soon. The number of cases nationally has passed 10,000, and the number of cases in Los Angeles is doubling every nine months. AIDS is a terrible disease that needs to be vigorously attacked on all fronts and with all of the weapons that medicine and decency can muster.