County Endorses Bleach-Kit Grant : Health: Clash with AIDS activists is averted. About $5,800 is targeted to prevent spread of AIDS by drug users. Testing for TB, hepatitis is planned.

Averting a certain confrontation with Orange County AIDS activists, the Board of Supervisors unanimously endorsed a $900,000 federal grant Tuesday that would, in part, provide bleach kits to local intravenous drug users in an attempt to slow the spread of the fatal disease.

The quick approval, which came without discussion, sent a surge of excitement through a contingent of physicians and advocates for people with AIDS, who had come to the Hall of Administration girding for a potential funding fight.

“I’m ecstatic!” said Priscilla Munro, executive director of Irvine-based AIDS Services Foundation. “I can’t tell you how much impact this can have in the community.”

The lack of public discussion surprised even one supervisor who worried that the issue would be interpreted in some circles as condoning drug use.

“We all knew they were coming,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said, referring to the advocate groups. “But this issue is very important to the public health of Orange County.”

Riley, whose district includes Laguna Beach, where AIDS is a dominant public health and political issue, was undecided on the grant as late as Saturday afternoon. On Tuesday, however, the supervisor said he was swayed by a compilation of national statistics that linked intravenous drug use to the rapid spread of AIDS through the heterosexual community and to newborn children.

In the past two years, Riley said, 26 Orange County children have been born with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. Twelve of them have died. For the most part, Riley said, the children were born to parents who were using injectable drugs.

“I’ve seen these babies,” the supervisor said, “and I’m satisfied that the proposal is in the best interest of Orange County, and that’s why I voted for it.”

The three-year $900,000 grant will be administered by the county’s Health Care Agency and provides for the county to contribute $30,000 to the program in each of the three years. County officials said only a small part of the grant--about $5,800--would provide bleach kits to drug users.

Cleaning needles with bleach is believed to reduce the chances of transmitting the virus. Officials said the bleach kits would include a ration of sterilized water, bleach and written counseling material. County health care workers will distribute the bleach kits to drug users on the streets.

The remaining bulk of the funds would pay for additional testing for tuberculosis and hepatitis B--two diseases often associated with intravenous drug use--and counseling programs that would target an estimated 3,000 intravenous drug users in each year of the grant.

Throughout the country, intravenous drug users are among those at highest risk of acquiring the virus that causes AIDS. In Orange County, of the 2,221 AIDS cases documented since the early 1980s, only 156 cases were contracted through injection drug use, according to the September report of the county’s AIDS Surveillance and Monitoring Program.

The program, especially the bleach component of the grant, has stirred some controversy when applied in other areas, including Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago. But county officials said it has proven successful in those cities and can do the same here.

The county’s grant award comes as similar programs are being established in Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and San Joaquin counties.

“In no way will we be dispensing or handing out syringes,” said Bill Edelman, the county’s drug abuse services director. “This grant is about trying to help people. The press has jumped on the issue of bleach, but that is only a minuscule part of what this grant is about. . . . We’re teaching people that we care about them.”

Edelman said the county, through separate outreach programs, has identified about 4,000 intravenous drug users.

Services funded by the federal grant could begin within the next few weeks, Edelman said.

Although there was no opposition on the board or among the jubilant group of advocates who happily streamed from the meeting chamber following the vote, not everyone had praise for the county’s decision.

Congressman William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), a strong critic of using public money to fund AIDS care, denounced the supervisors’ vote.

“It’s another step down the road to condoning drug use in this country,” said the congressman, who was stationed just outside the hall conducting a separate news conference when approached by reporters.

“I wouldn’t have voted to do it. The drug culture in America is debilitating, and the problem is not diminished when our politicians take action like this.”

But Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez defended the board’s decision, saying the program’s impact would be felt well beyond the local community of drug abusers.

“This is a public health issue that is a great threat,” Vasquez said. “The whole epidemic has touched so many lives. We need to be sensitive, understanding and informed. And I underline informed.”

Although Orange County does not have the number of intravenous drug users that larger and more urban areas have, Vasquez said their presence must be acknowledged.

“If you don’t respond to high-risk groups when they first need treatment, the costs later are staggering,” Vasquez said.

Pearl Jemison-Smith, chairwoman of the county’s HIV Planning Advisory Council, said she and others worked most of the weekend to fill the meeting room Tuesday with supporters.

Jemison-Smith was so concerned that there would be opposition to the grant that she came to the chamber clutching a portrait of a 7-month-old child who had been born with HIV, contracting the virus from a drug-abusing mother.

“I shouldn’t have to do this,” she said. “But if we can get out there and use the bleach, that is the first step toward progress. Then we can get them (drug abusers) to the next step.”