A False--and Fatal--Sense of Security : AIDS: Too many women continue to think the disease is something that happens to other people. One support group is living proof it isn’t.

As casually as if she were describing the plot of a TV show, Linda explains to her women’s support group that she missed the last few meetings because she was close to death from double pneumonia.

At 22, Linda (not her real name) is showing the ravages of AIDS. She is pale, and her big T-shirt and bright green skirt reveal how thin she has become. Her weight has dropped from 128 pounds to 96.

She contracted the virus, called HIV, from her hemophiliac boyfriend, who was infected by a blood transfusion before testing blood products for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome began in 1985.

Many of the women in her AIDS group contracted the disease years ago, through contaminated drug needles or through sex with a man who used intravenous drugs or was bisexual. It was not known then that such behavior was high risk.

But some uninfected women today are making those same fatal errors because they believe AIDS is not a woman’s disease, assuming it is an illness confined to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users.

Diane Bonne and her education staff at the San Diego AIDS Foundation-- who talk to 3,000 people a month in businesses, churches and schools about the threat of AIDS--say most women seem to distance themselves from the threat, believing it’s not their problem.

She doubts that most are taking precautions against the disease they treat so casually. Bonne finds that many women, especially minorities, feel unable to talk about condoms with their partners or to insist on safe sex practices.

But women who today live with that sense of safety may die with AIDS.

Linda and her friends are well beyond such denial in the intimacy of their group, which is sponsored by UC San Diego’s Owen Clinic and the HIV Neuro-behavioral Research Center. Of 30 local services for AIDS patients, this is the only one exclusively for women. Here, they have found a haven where they can deal with the fears, anger and triumphs they experience in living with a death sentence.

For some it is the only haven, for they have told few people the nature of their illness, to avoid discrimination. Most feel great stigma and shame from the disease because society associates it with drug use, prostitution and homosexuality.

So far, these women are an apparent anomaly.

The San Diego County Department of Health Services reports that only 100 women in the county have full-blown AIDS, about 4% of the 2,251 people with the disease in the county. But Dr. Michelle Ginsberg, county health epidemiologist, estimates that 30,000 men and women in San Diego are now HIV-positive, meaning they are infected with the AIDS virus. Although Ginsberg offered no statistics on the proportion of HIV-infected women, she said the number is rising.

Nationally, 7% of all AIDS cases diagnosed by 1988 involved women. By September, 1990, that figure had climbed to 10.5% of the 149,500 total cases diagnosed.

But a look eastward reveals some startling figures. In some Central African nations, 20% of the adult urban population has AIDS, and equal numbers of men and women are infected. In New York City and northern New Jersey, AIDS is the leading cause of death for women ages 25 to 35.

White, middle-class women may be lulled into a sense of indifference and security by the fact that 70% of the females infected nationwide are black and Latina. Many of these women live in poor, urban areas of high drug use. Although middle-class white women may never become a major part of the AIDS epidemic, the disease is lethal, and anyone with a possibility of exposure should practice safe sex.

For women of all races who already have AIDS, ignorance and prejudice may accompany the disease.

Some health providers insist that many doctors fail to recognize persistent gynecological infections as the first signs of the virus in women. Physicians may believe that a female patient is not in a high-risk group and therefore fail to perform a test for the virus.

To compound the problem, most women won’t qualify for social welfare assistance once their disease is diagnosed and they become disabled.

That is because some of the symptoms experienced only by women--such as chronic pelvic inflammation, yeast infections and vaginal thrush--are not listed by the federal Centers for Disease Control as typical of full-blown AIDS. The CDC criteria for AIDS are used by social service agencies to determine who receives disability benefits.

CDC scientists based their early definition of the disease on symptoms seen only in gay men. Currently, 65% of the women who die of AIDS do not qualify for social service benefits under CDC guidelines. But, according to the CDC, there are no immediate plans to change the guidelines.

Financial assistance, welfare and medical benefits are critical in the advanced stages of the disease, when all AIDS victims suffer from opportunistic infections, such as pneumonia, meningitis and tuberculosis--until one illness proves fatal.

But hope is always there. The women in the AIDS support group frequently talk about new drugs and rumors of cures. The possibility of returning to normalcy and getting on with their lives is the unspoken obsession.

These women’s lives are testimony that AIDS is not just another venereal disease and certainly not a disease of just gay men and drug users.

What is the solution? How do we prevent infection today that would spell death in the years to follow?

The beginning is through education for all women--about the delicate subjects of safe sex practices, drug use, homosexuality and bisexuality. That and a healthy dose of, “Yes, it can happen to me,” can influence a woman to take control of her future.