AIDS Cases Down, but Some Fear HIV May Be On Rise

The number of new AIDS cases in Ventura County has dropped for the second year in a row, but health officials warn that the number of people contracting the HIV virus may be growing.

It usually takes about 10 years for someone who has the virus to manifest AIDS.

“The number of AIDS cases we are seeing now are really just estimates of what people were doing with their lives eight to 10 years ago,” said Susan Attaway, program manager for AIDS education and prevention at the Ventura County Health Department.

She said she believes that more young people, Latinos and women are contracting the virus in Ventura County.

So far this year, there are 44 new AIDS cases, down from 48 new cases last year, according to county health officials.

Lynn Bartosh, in charge of AIDS surveillance with Ventura County Public Health, said the numbers have dropped substantially since 1996, when there were 90 new cases reported.

But she cautioned that drug combinations, or “cocktails,” have delayed the onset of AIDS--and, in some cases, helped those diligent about following their regimens to manage the disease for an indefinite period.

But county residents, she added, still need to be vigilant by avoiding risky behavior. She pointed out that the drug cocktails can lose their efficacy over time and that drug-resistant strains of the virus are surfacing.

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As of Wednesday, at least 392 county residents have AIDS and at least 595 people have died of it since the Health Department began keeping statistics in 1983. Although the department tracks the number of people tested anonymously at county clinics, it does not have numbers on those requesting confidentiality or who are tested at private health care facilities.

“We have no way to know the complete numbers,” Bartosh said.

She said a state agency predicted that there were about 900 people in the county who are HIV-positive. “But other people who work in this field guess there’s between 1,000 and 3,000, so it’s really a pretty wide range,” she added.

Attaway said that whatever the specific numbers, she thinks more people are contracting HIV than in previous years. “I know the people who deal with HIV-positive patients say their caseloads are growing.”

In Ventura County, there has been a rise in the number of young people, particularly gay Latinos, contacting HIV, according to Richard Prichard, director of internal medicine at Ventura County Medical Center.

A higher percentage of those testing positive are in their early 20s, and frequently they are young men who are married with children, he said.

To address this problem, county officials said they need more outreach programs targeting Latinos. These include Spanish-speaking public health workers and medical staff, and literature about HIV and AIDS that is written in Spanish.

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Attaway stressed the importance of reaching people of all ages and levels of education.

“I think people have always felt complacent in Ventura County,” she said. “But now more people see headlines of AIDS rates dropping and they think the epidemic is over. But it’s not.”

Martin Perrier, case manager at AIDS Care, said he has also noticed an increase in the number of young people coming into the Ventura clinic.

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“Think back to being young and you have this air of immortality that I can’t get sick, or get hurt, or die,” Perrier said. “But HIV tosses all that out the window.”

Although the number of people with AIDS in Ventura County is less than 1%, Perrier said, the numbers could be deceptively low.

“I sometimes feel like the clients that we work with are only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “A fear of mine is that we could be looking at a whole other generation of people becoming infected through risky behavior. And it happens because people keep thinking this can’t happen to me.”

AIDS Exposure

Of the AIDS cases in Ventura County, exposure occurred in the following ways:

Male-male contact: 64%

Injection drug use: 10%

Heterosexual contact: 9%

Male-male contact and injection drug use: 6%

Blood transfusion: 3%

Hemophilia: 2%

Risk not reported: 6%

Source: Ventura County Public Health