Varied Faces of HIV Shown at UCI Women’s Conference

Jeanne White has told the story countless times: Her son, Ryan White, a hemophiliac, was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS at 13 and died at 18. In those five years, he had to battle prejudice while learning how to live with a disease that ravaged his young body even as it changed the political, social and medical scope of the world.

Many of the listeners who came to listen to White on Saturday at the fifth annual HIV Women’s Conference at UC Irvine were no strangers to Ryan’s struggle with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

Still, they couldn’t help but cry as they heard his mother describe his pain and courage, and they took to heart the message she has shared with people across the country since his death in 1990.

“Ryan’s face is only one face of AIDS,” said White, the conference keynote speaker. “There are many, many faces of AIDS with their stories. Please share yours.”

Sponsored by the AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County and the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, the conference brought together medical experts and other health care professionals to discuss, among other things, nutrition, spirituality and medical care for those who are HIV-infected.

The conference also featured a panel of women who have been diagnosed as HIV-positive and who shared their personal experiences. Women make up about 6% of the 3,400 HIV-positive patients in Orange County.

About 400 people attended the daylong conference, organizers said.

In her speech, White, who has become deeply involved with AIDS education and advocacy for increased research, encouraged people to volunteer their time with community groups, learn more about AIDS and not shy away from the controversy and fear swirling around the disease. That was how her son devoted his short life, she said.

Ryan White, who was infected through a 1984 blood transfusion for treatment of hemophilia, became a household name when he was banned from his Indiana school because of fear that he might contaminate classmates. He died a few months before Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act, which provides millions of dollars in federal aid each year for the care, counseling and support of people with AIDS or HIV.

“Get involved now because we can’t wait until it hits every family, every household,” Jeanne White said. “There are ways to educate people and if you hear people make wrong statements, they need to be corrected.”

Rosemary Ferris, a 45-year-old Irvine resident, has been HIV positive for seven years. She was infected through unprotected sex with her then-boyfriend who, after they were married in 1992, died of AIDS-complicated heart failure.

“My biggest hope and my prayers are for women here to become their own best friend, their own advocate so that they learn to take care of themselves,” said Ferris.

Janice Barrett, 44 of Santa Ana, also contracted HIV through unprotected sex. Her message to the women who came to the conference was one she wishes she had realized herself years before.

“I never knew that I, as a heterosexual woman, was at risk,” she said during a break. “I didn’t understand that I could be affected.”

Ferris, Barrett and others who attended the conference said, if nothing else, they hoped people would leave with a sense of empowerment and want to get involved by educating themselves about AIDS.

“For the infected women, I hope that by taking the risk to be so public, that we bring hope, strength and encouragement to their lives,” Barrett said. “I hope that they come away from this changed individuals.”