HIV clinic sees more teens

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a worrisome report late last month on a jump in newly diagnosed HIV cases among young gay men.

From 2001 to 2006, such cases among all gay males ages 13 to 24 rose by 12%, which was ominous enough. But the steepest increase was among young gay blacks -- up 15%, compared with 8% for young gay Latinos and 9% for young gay whites.

Dr. Wilbert C. Jordan, medical director of the OASIS Clinic at the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center near Watts, confirms the increase on the ground.

In the last 15 months, the HIV clinic has gone from treating one teenage patient to treating 47. This month the clinic will begin a program on Saturdays just for adolescents. Jordan expects to have 100 teenage patients before the end of the year.

Many of his patients are kids who got kicked out of their homes for being gay or experimenting with sex with another boy, Jordan said. So, he said, they went to West Hollywood, prostituted themselves for food, contracted HIV and now are back in South Los Angeles, infecting their friends.

“The first wave got infected outside of the community,” he said. “The second wave are those getting infected in South-Central.”

The jump in new infections is particularly discouraging to someone who spends so much time trying to educate people about the virus.

“You meet these kids,” he said, “and they don’t know a damn thing.”

Even those who do understand often adopt a fatalism that’s hard for him and many other middle-class people to comprehend, Jordan said.

In neighborhoods where high numbers of young black men become homicide victims, he said, the possibility of contracting a slowly progressing virus seems like a normal risk.

“These kids are sort of mentally adapted to not being here when they’re 30,” Jordan said. “If you think you’re going to be dead by 30 and the disease takes 10 years, it doesn’t scare you so much.”

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mary.engel@latimes.com