Television Review : ‘AIDS Quarterly’ Probes Depth of Poland’s Health Dilemma

Perhaps the most nettlesome aspects of the global spread of AIDS are its glacial pace and how it hits hardest those poor countries whose health care systems are least able to contend with it.

No sooner has the confetti settled from European celebrations of a unified, liberated Continent than we see such reports as the latest edition of “The AIDS Quarterly,” tonight at 8 on Channel 15 and at 10 on Channel 28. The edition’s main segment (followed by a brief one on HIV-infected author Edmund White) examines why Poland has become a nightmarishly perfect host for AIDS.

Consider the elements that make Poland a virtual AIDS sponge. Its deep Catholic traditions frown on the talk or use of condoms, and frown even more on gay men coming out of the closet. A cheap, homemade type of heroin called Kompot has caused a 400% increase in addicts in a decade, with numbers now reaching some 600,000 Poles. Since needles are scarce and usually shared, most Kompot users are now HIV-positive.

The final insult is Poland’s health-care apparatus: Warsaw’s only infectious-diseases hospital can handle no more than eight AIDS patients at once--and they are treated with medicine past its expiration date. As Dr. Andrej Horban states: “This is the dilemma of the poor man.”

The depth of the dilemma, though, is somewhat blunted by the report’s rather numb approach, broken by moments of chilling displays of intolerance (a woman berates a homeless drug addict on the street) or hopelessness (a young couple, both infected, wait to die).