Number of New AIDS Cases Drops : Health: Only 14 have been detected this year. But a growing number of heterosexual women are testing HIV-positive.

Carmen has three young children and worries constantly about what will happen to them if she dies.

The 32-year-old Oxnard woman has been a single parent since her husband died of AIDS last year. Carmen herself tested positive for HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, in 1987.

“The youngest one is not quite aware of what’s going on,” said Carmen, who asked that her full name be withheld. “I’ve explained to him that some people get sick and get better, and some people get sick and don’t get better. But it’s a pretty hard thing to tell a child who has just lost his parent.”

Health officials say that although the number of new AIDS cases in the county has dropped this year compared to previous years--thanks to improved medical treatment that delays the onset of full-blown AIDS--a growing number of heterosexual women such as Carmen are testing positive for HIV.

According to county statistics, only 14 cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome have been detected through June 30 of this year. If that rate continues to the end of the year, the county will have the lowest number of new AIDS cases since 1988.

“It could be reflective that people aren’t progressing to full-blown AIDS as quickly,” said Marjorie Richey, an infection-control nurse at Los Robles Regional Medical Center. “I’m seeing more HIV-infected people, though. We’re keeping them healthier because we’re getting them sooner. With these new medicines, we’ve been able to stave off opportunistic infections.”

Cameron Keep, 32, of Ventura is an example of how medicine can keep AIDS at bay.

He takes 20 pills a day and has not yet contracted the full-blown syndrome, although he tested HIV-positive seven years ago.

Keep has had shingles three times, chronic kidney problems, and now has a low platelet count. But he looks tanned and healthy.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” Keep said. “I’m afraid of being sick. I’m not a very good patient. I’ve always been so independent, and the idea of relying on someone if I’m sick really scares me.”

Ventura County residents are still denying that the disease has spread to the heterosexual community, said Keep, who is gay. “A lot of people still see this as just a gay man’s disease and not a disease everyone has to worry about.”

Of the 237 people in Ventura County who have contracted AIDS since 1980, 15 are women, according to statistics provided by the county Public Health Department. Of those, almost half got the fatal disease from heterosexual contact.

County health officials said the number of women who have tested positive for HIV has doubled from last year. Of the eight women who tested positive so far this year, six are believed to have contracted the virus through heterosexual contact.

Dr. Lawrence Dodds, director of the department, expects the trend to continue. “Heterosexual contact will eventually become one of the major ways of transmission,” he said.

“I think women have always been at risk,” said Martina Rippey, a public health nurse who heads the Ventura County AIDS Task Force. “They’re just realizing it and coming in to be tested and are finding themselves positive. Heterosexuals in the past have not considered themselves at risk.”

Richey, who heads an AIDS support group, said she has seen the membership gradually increase to 20% women.

“We knew we were going to see it in the heterosexual population. It was just a matter of time,” she said. “I think we in Ventura County don’t want to believe it. We’re a very conservative community.”

Health officials estimate that about 2,000 to 3,000 people in Ventura County are infected with the virus. The exact number is unavailable because physicians are not obligated to report positive test results to health officials.

Felice, 32, of Thousand Oaks said she received the virus from her husband, who died of AIDS in 1987. “He was a bisexual male, but I knew that when I met him,” she said.

Her husband contracted pneumonia two months before their marriage in 1983 and was diagnosed with AIDS, she said. His physicians knew that they were getting married, but she was never educated about the disease.

“I had never heard of AIDS. I just thought it meant he had to take better care of himself so he wouldn’t get colds,” Felice said.

No one suggested that she should get tested, and Felice didn’t realize that she was at risk until five years into their marriage. “I picked up a book, and I read some of the symptoms, and I realized I had some,” she said.

Felice, who tested positive the year her husband died, later married a Thousand Oaks man.

“I told him on our first date,” she said. “He didn’t have any problems with it.”

Felice said that being HIV-positive has barely affected her lifestyle. She has not been sick and still does the same things that she did before her diagnosis.

“When we got married, I thought I had a short time to live, so he planned all these trips,” she said. “We did all these trips and I just kept living, so I decided to stop living as though I’m going to die tomorrow.”

Carmen, however, can’t stop thinking about dying, even though she doesn’t believe that it will happen soon.

She said AIDS was “the furthest thing” from her mind in 1987, when her husband was tested after suddenly becoming sick two years into their marriage.

“He came home with tears in his eyes and said it was the ‘Big A,’ ” Carmen said. “I didn’t even know what he meant. He had to explain it to me, and then we both just cried.”

The Oxnard woman speculates that her husband acquired the virus while he was a serviceman. “He never used drugs, so he must have got it from someone sexually before meeting me,” she said.

Carmen has not shown any symptoms of AIDS, but she recently contracted a fever that she fears may turn into something more serious, she said.

She is in the process of making a will but still agonizes about how her children will remember her and how they will be raised by her late husband’s family. Her youngest son, a 6-year-old boy who was conceived while her husband was HIV-positive, is tested every six months for the virus.

“We’ve talked about where they’ll go if I’m gone,” she said, crying softly. “But no one can take my place.”

County AIDS cases

New cases Deaths 1982 1 1 1983 1 1 1984 3 1 1985 7 4 1986 17 12 1987 23 12 1988 37 13 1989 37 30 1990 43 41 1991 54 33 1992* 14 21 Totals 237 169

* Though June 30 AIDS Resources AIDS Care Inc.: 1-800-540-2437, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Ventura County Public Health message line, Monday though Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Spanish-speaking: 652-5934 Gay and Lesbian Resources of Ventura County AIDS Information Line, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.: 389-1530 Source: Ventura County Public Health Department