Counseling as a Vaccine for AIDS : To reduce the risk of contracting HIV, Oasis Clinic therapy includes cultural education and a course in self-esteem. : DR. WILBERT JORDAN

Being a doctor of infectious diseases, I have seen far too many people come into my office who didn’t have money for treatment. Being mostly poor South-Central residents, they needed someplace like the Oasis Clinic where they could receive help.

I look at the psychological profile as much as the cultural environment of a person who visits the clinic.

The South-Central culture creates an environment where a young black man may, at some point, become imprisoned. Bisexuality is a large part of the problem, particularly for young black men in jail, where it seems that homosexual contact is OK.

The officials claim no sex goes on in jail. It would be easier to admit it. If there is sex in prisons--which we all know there is--then the prisons should provide condoms.

Jail is the beginning of a deadly sexual cycle that eventually affects females in the community.

Women, especially girls, become the next focal point of the Oasis Clinic. For young girls, it’s a lack of love at home that leads them to subconsciously seek love outside the home. Usually, that love will be sought with an older man who has sexual experience--a man who, while he’s having sex with the girl, says, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” though he doesn’t really mean it. The girl does, though. She thinks he means it. The girls need acceptance, and the only way they get it is by having sex.

Some of my patients are married men who engage in homosexual sex. So when a married man says he hasn’t been with another woman in 15 years, it’s the truth. These men need cultural education, because they are engaging in sex purely from their sexual ego.

All sorts of men participate in this type of sexual behavior: upper-middle-class black professionals from Baldwin Hills and View Park, and younger men, too. Sixty percent of the HIV-infected women who come here have received it from married men like this.

The health care community should get serious and make AIDS more of a major health issue. But I think the Oasis Clinic’s counseling has more influence, and gives more help than a health care system can provide. Its approach is to keep HIV-negative people, who are nonetheless at high risk, from contracting the virus. We do this by educating the patients about strong black historical roles, which is helpful in causing the patients to feel good about themselves.

For instance, I show them “Glory,” a terrific movie, which gives the patients the sort of strong black roles they need, whether black and straight, or black and gay.

What we do at Oasis is find out who the high-risk people are, and demonstrate to them that it’s not bad for them to be the type of person they are. It’s just wrong for them to engage in risky sexual behavior.

Too many people use sex (to bolster their) self-esteem. Unfortunately, it’s one of the few things that some people feel they do well, both for themselves and others.

The clinic offers a six-month self-esteem course. During that time, the patients are advised to not have sex.

Since most of the patients come in with more than one sexually transmitted disease, abstaining gives them time for treatment, allows them to heal, and cultivates a sense of personal control over their bodies.

Out of 134 patients who have gone through the self-esteem program, only two have not changed their behavior. Those two, I believe, have a deeper problem that might be rectified through some sort of anti-depressant drugs.

We currently have 900 (patients), most of whom are referred here by their own doctors. At first, I provided the funding for the clinic from my own pocket; we now receive funding from the Ryan White Foundation. I care deeply for both the people and the community, and feel that something has to be done for them right now.

I want to find a cure for this disease. I work closely with Search Alliance out of West Hollywood, which is looking at different treatments for the AIDS virus. We have found things through boosting the immune system that appear very exciting.

But what is truly good is we can now realistically think in terms of gaining a cure. We now feel that we are getting close.