PROFILE / AIDS FIGHTER : Red Light Districts Are Research Sites for N.Y. Doctor : She has tested 1,000 prostitutes so far. Infection rates have soared from 8% to well over 30% in last five years.

On a sweltering Brooklyn night, two prostitutes emerge from the eerie desolation of garbage-strewn lots into the orange cone of a street light. One of them disappears down the street with a man. The other woman, Donna, 29, moves cautiously as if beckoned by the glaring red brake lights toward a van that has just pulled over.

Tall and slender, wearing no make-up, casually but neatly dressed, she steps into the van with three strangers.

Inside, she is paid $10--three times more than she charges for a sexual favor, five times more than the cost of a vial of crack in her neighborhood.

All Donna did was take an AIDS blood test administered by Dr. Joyce Wallace, a Greenwich Village internist. If Donna shows up at Wallace’s office for the test results, she gets another $20.

Wallace may have been the first doctor in the United States to study AIDS in women, beginning with an AIDS patient who was referred to her in 1982. Now she leads the fight against AIDS infection in prostitutes in New York, one of most difficult battlegrounds in a difficult war.

Infection rates among prostitutes have soared from 8% to well over 30% since Wallace started keeping track five years ago. So far, she has tested 1,000 New York streetwalkers. Of those infected with the HIV virus, almost three-fourths took drugs using shared needles, a common infection route. About 7% are not IV users, but reported having had unprotected sex with an intravenous drug user.

Using grants from the Centers for Disease Control, New York state and Ansell Inc., which manufactures condoms, Wallace pursues her twin goals of building a data base on this explosive problem and trying to help the victims of the disease by counseling and medical treatment.

With red hair to match her firebrand disposition, Wallace, 49, cruises the streets in a van pressing her search. She regularly ignores her driver’s concern for her safety. When he refused to stop in one area, Wallace hopped out of the moving van to solicit participants for the AIDS test.

“I’ve told her that she’s alone out there,” the driver, John Reid, said angrily as he pulled over in Williamsburg, another drug-ravaged neighborhood, to await her return. “I’m not going to fight off some big guy. She’s so stupid! Look at that gang,” he said pointing to a group of young men. “This is dangerous!”

Wallace returned without incident. The white Street Outreach van rolled on as it does four nights a week, visiting various New York red light districts testing, counseling and handing out free condoms.

On that night with Dr. Wallace, five prostitutes were tested and three appeared certain to have the disease.

Diane, 37, a mother of four, showed inch-long tracks of needle scars on her wrist while Wallace was drawing blood to confirm a previous positive test.

“Do you know what it means that you tested positive for HIV?,” Wallace asked. Diane nodded. “But I feel good,” she objected. “I’m getting fatter and fatter.”

Wallace urged Diane to have her 2-year-old daughter tested for AIDS. But Diane went back out giggling.

Lois, 36, a lively woman with long black-painted nails and a ready smile, asked the doctor about two long swollen areas running from her chin down her neck. “If it is, God forbid, that disease, it will go away, won’t it?” she asked plaintively. Her eyes filled with tears as she quickly crossed herself.

Wallace suddenly looked older as she held Lois’ hand, slowly explaining the disease. “Touch it again,” Lois pleaded with the doctor, as though she hoped the medical touch would make it magically go away.

After massaging the area some more, Wallace urged Lois to come to her office in two weeks. “I’ll give you another $20,” she called as Lois left the van.

“She’s got it,” Wallace said quietly, almost to herself. “A chain of swollen lymphs like that. What’s so sad is she had to have been infected recently. It could have been prevented,” she shook her head sadly.

“A girl like that, with personality. You know what I’m saying?” she leaned earnestly toward Reid who quietly shared a part of her despair. “With personality!” she stressed, and then fell back on the couch exhausted, rubbing her face in her hands.