Joann Marie Ruiz; Nurse Contracted AIDS on the Job

Joann Marie Ruiz, 42, a nurse and one of the nation’s first health-care workers to contract AIDS on the job. In July, 1987, after she had drawn blood from an AIDS patient, the syringe slipped and the needle plunged into her right thigh. In September she learned she had acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The next year the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that a health-care worker had developed the disease, but it did not reveal the worker’s identity. Since then about 40 health workers in the United States are reported to have been infected on the job with the HIV virus that causes AIDS. After contracting the disease that eventually took her life, Miss Ruiz volunteered with the Sacramento AIDS Foundation’s Hand to Hand Project as an emotional-support counselor for patients dying of the illness. On Monday in Sacramento.