ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Smart Caring at College Hospital

Many hospitals are quietly providing quality care for AIDS patients, but College Hospital Costa Mesa recently became the first in Orange County to open a unit dedicated exclusively to their treatment. That showed leadership.

The AIDS stigma, as well as the prospect of dying in the prime of life, presents a unique problem for AIDS patients and their care-givers.

College Hospital’s new unit is staffed by medical personnel who have expressed a special interest in AIDS and its complications.

Similar units have been operating with success in Los Angeles and San Francisco hospitals for six years.

The seven-bed unit will provide medical and psychological treatment for victims of AIDS, the deadly immune deficiency disease that has taken a tragic toll in the decade since it was first identified in the United States and elsewhere.

In the unit, AIDS patients will be afforded the opportunity of being in the company of others suffering from complications of the same disease. That should help alleviate the isolation that many AIDS victims say they feel.

There are other hospitals in Orange County that have considered creating such units but have ruled them out for various reasons, including a concern that an AIDS center might further isolate victims from other patients. In these hospitals, AIDS patients are treated in specialized pulmonary or other medical units, according to their needs.

But it is welcome news that at least one hospital has made available a unit that focuses exclusively on AIDS patients. One good reason for having such a special unit is that AIDS is controversial both because of the deadliness of the virus and because of the way it is contracted.

Casual contact is not a danger in the transmission of the virus, but many people, including fellow hospital patients, may fear that it is. That can add to the pain AIDS victims feel as they face treatment for serious medical conditions that require hospitalization.

Long overdue, the new unit puts the 138-bed College Hospital in the forefront of AIDS treatment in Orange County.