Prescription Is Fun at Nation’s First Playroom for AIDS-Infected Kids : Health: N.Y. hospital opens treatment center to help the young patients overcome depression and fear while a play therapist works with them.

Joey’s mother watched him blow out the seven candles on his birthday cake with mingled feelings of pleasure and apprehension: Could this birthday be his last?

“It’s heaven-sent to me because you never know what to expect,” she said. “Every birthday is a celebration to us.”

Joey has AIDS. His mother already has watched one child die of the disease that she and her husband passed on to their children.

Joey celebrated his birthday in the company of other children with AIDS in a special place dedicated to a doctor’s idea that play can prolong the lives of his young patients.

It’s called the Magic Playroom, the first of its kind in the city and believed to be unique in the nation--a treatment center where the only prescription is fun.

In New York City, AIDS has become the No. 1 killer of Hispanic children and the second-leading cause of death among African-American children, according to Dr. Arye Rubinstein, director of the Center for AIDS Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and one of the world’s leading experts on pediatric AIDS.

For years, Rubinstein tried to get the playroom off the ground. Then a large corporation came along with a $100,000 donation.

The playroom finally opened in December at Bronx Municipal Hospital, in a tough, poor New York City borough where the incidence of pediatric AIDS runs higher than anywhere else in the country.

Health officials estimate that one of every 30 women of childbearing age in the South Bronx is HIV-positive.

Rubinstein has seen children overcome depression and fear while a play therapist works with them, encouraging them to climb and to slide and to chatter about the parents they might have lost and the sickness they might feel.

“It’s a secure environment--it’s like a dream come true for them,” he said.

The Israeli-born immunologist is credited with having diagnosed the first case of pediatric AIDS in 1981 and is developing a vaccine aimed at blocking the transmission of HIV from mother to fetus. He blames the high rate of AIDS among children in the Bronx on drug abuse, poor education and promiscuity.

About 30 impoverished AIDS-infected children attend the free day-care center at the Pediatric AIDS Center of Bronx Municipal. Their fear of treatment at the AIDS center now is eased at the playroom, where good cheer prevails.

Joey dabbed a finger in one of the sugar roses on his chocolate cake and offered pieces to other little AIDS patients wearing pointed Bugs Bunny party hats. He declined a piece himself.

“I’m not like all of you,” said Joey, who has been in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and infections. “I’m not a sweet eater.”

But Joey--whose real name is not being used to protect his identity--is like all other children in that he loves to play.

The children scramble around the large playroom, filled with bright colors and soft, safe toys, in a coveted corner of the hospital filled with sunshine. They climb the padded jungle gym and fight over toys, giggling and gossiping about their doctors and teachers.

The only reminders of their affliction: A few sniffle and cough, and one boy has a tube running from his nose to a little backpack that carries his medication.

One mother calls it a place where the kids can forget those scary words that, in a better world, they wouldn’t yet know: HIV-positive. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Needles, AZT. Death.

The playroom was designed around symbols of life, with trees bearing leaves that change with the seasons and with a playhouse everyone gets to decorate, said Carolyn Fox Lelyveld, the director of the day-care center.

“We decided we needed things that weren’t just for one or two days,” she said. “We needed things that were living, that would grow.”

“There is no play, there are no toys in these children’s lives. They live in extreme poverty--and they live hidden lives,” said Becky Madeira, a spokeswoman for Pepsi-Cola Co. who persuaded her corporation to go beyond the Christmas toy donations and build something lasting.

So Pepsi donated more than $100,000 to construct the playroom and is working with medical centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco to build others.

Rubinstein said medical officials report 6,000 cases of HIV-positive children in the United States, but he believes the true figure could run as high as 20,000.

By the turn of the century, he said, more than 10 million children will be HIV-positive worldwide.

And how many of his young patients are likely to die? It’s a question he won’t answer.

“What if there is a cure for AIDS tomorrow?” he said.