AIDS…an issue that will not go away

 Education has many issues that it must deal with…AIDS is one that we would like to leave to Africa. Let Bill Gates donate his money and he can deal with the issue over THE$RE.

AIDS is an issue that effects Alabama and every state in the U.S.. The question that I raise is how do we as educators and parents deal with the issue? We need to do more than show how to avoid it through memos, videos and talks. What do we do with the broken families and damaged lives that are impacted by AIDS? How does IDEA and FAPE apply to children with AIDS? It would be easier to talk about NCLB or ideas for Parent's Night but this is real life and the things we must struggle with if we are to truly be effective in our schools.

AIDS hits its 25-year mark, leaving shattered families strewn in its path   Sunday, June 04, 2006DAVE PARKS News staff writer Twenty-five years ago, the Centers for Disease Control warned public health officials throughout the nation that a mysterious and deadly disease was circulating among gay men in California. That June 5, 1981, CDC report was the first official warning that AIDS was on the move in America. A year later, the first case was documented in Alabama, a hemophiliac who contracted the disease from blood products and later died. It was the beginning of a long march of death. More than 5,200 people with AIDS have died in Alabama since the epidemic began, according to the state Department of Public Health. Worldwide, 25 million people have died. Longtime public health workers look back in horror at the early days of AIDS and note that, since then, conditions have improved remarkably, thanks largely to more testing and more effective drugs. The nature of the epidemic has changed. AIDS started as a big city disease. Now, it has found a home in the Deep South, which for decades has been a fertile field for sexually transmitted diseases that thrive on poverty, ignorance and poor access to medical care. About 850 new HIV infections were reported last year in Alabama. "I've definitely seen it move along socio-economic lines," said Kathie Hiers, executive director of AIDS Alabama. "The highest rise is in the South." The epidemic is spreading out, hitting rural areas, she said. "Alabama's 50 percent rural, and a lot of the Southern states are in the same boat we are." That's why the South led the nation in the rate of new infections 1999-2003. Officials agree that people in Alabama know about AIDS, but they need to do more about preventing, detecting and treating the disease. "More people are aware," said state Rep. Laura Hall, D-Huntsville, an AIDS advocate whose 25-year-old son died of AIDS in 1992. "There's still lots of work to be done." Early epidemic "It's been a trip," said Jane Cheeks, who was a sexually transmitted disease investigator at the Jefferson County Health Department when the first AIDS cases surfaced. Cheeks now heads the AIDS/HIV division of the state Department of Public Health. She recalled one of the first people with AIDS to come into the Health Department. A resident doctor from the University of Alabama at Birmingham noticed that the patient had swollen lymph nodes and described the disease as a case of "nodular syphilis." "We didn't even know what to call it," Cheeks said. Health workers learned quickly, though, as the number of AIDS cases jumped. "First thing we noticed, people were dying," Cheeks said. "They were just dead within several months." In 1985, there were only 80 cases in the state; by 1990, nearly 2,000 people in Alabama had been infected. The increase in cases was accompanied by fear because people didn't know how the disease spread. "We didn't take any special precautions," Cheeks said. "It was not socially acceptable to even wear gloves." Some doctors and nurses didn't stay around to find out about AIDS. "We had many health care workers quit. They couldn't deal with it." The first AIDS test came in 1985, Cheeks recalled. It was fielded primarily so the American Red Cross could keep HIV from contaminating the blood supply. Word spread about the test, and people began donating blood so they could be tested for HIV. That alarmed public health officials, Cheeks said, because it increased the chances the virus would find its way into the blood supply. So public health officials opened separate testing sites, and CDC sent out guidelines for counseling patients. Cheeks was one of the first counselors to talk to newly diagnosed patients. "We'd tell them they were infected, they could infect other people, get their affairs in order." In 1987, the drug AZT became available in limited quantities. The drug was kept in a safe at the Health Department, and a committee decided which patients had the best chance of survival. They got the drug. "You talk about brutal," Cheeks said. AZT by itself didn't keep people from dying, she said. It just delayed death, and it caused serious side effects. Later, other antiretroviral drugs were fielded, and many AIDS patients now live long lives. Aging with AIDS Yvonne "Misty" Caldwell has been HIV-positive since 1995. "When I was diagnosed, I had full-blown AIDS," she recalled. "At the time I didn't give 2 cents for my life." But she's still alive, thanks to antiretroviral drugs that keep AIDS at bay. "I'm aging with it," she said. "I tell people now I'm not dying with it; I'm living with it." At 55, she has raised six children and has 14 grandchildren. "I've lived to see a grandchild go into the military." Caldwell credits the support she got from family and friends. Too many AIDS patients "get kicked to the curb," she said. But that didn't happen to her. About a half dozen people stuck with her and encouraged her. Many of them are now dead from causes other than AIDS, Misty said. "I've watched close friends die," Caldwell said. "I'm still here for a reason." She contracted the disease from a man with whom she'd had a relationship for 11 years. She had no idea that he was having sex with other women, she said. After they broke up, he died of AIDS. "The women came out of the woodwork," Caldwell said. These days, Caldwell talks to church groups about her experience. Often she is judged by women in congregations who blame her for getting infected with HIV. She tells them, "Guess what? You could be, too." If you have ever had unprotected sex or if the person you are having sex with ever had sex with another person, you are at risk, she said. "It's something most people never think about." Caldwell is black, and in Alabama about 70 percent of all new cases of HIV occur among blacks. Two-thirds of all people now living with AIDS in Alabama are black, one of the highest rates in the nation. She said one reason AIDS has hit the African-American community so hard is that black men don't like using condoms. "The epidemic is still on the upswing because we have people who think it's not going to happen to them." Buying life There is a cost for keeping Caldwell alive. The average cost of drug therapy is $10,000-$15,000 a year per patient, and that doesn't count clinical care. Dr. Michael Saag, director of UAB's 1917 AIDS Clinic, reports that sicker HIV-infected patients can run up health bills that are 2.5 times higher than healthier HIV-infected patients, about $36,500 compared with about $14,000 a year. So health authorities want to detect the disease earlier and get people treated quicker. It's cheaper that way and lowers mortality rates, Saag said. That's why there is now a push for universal HIV testing. The CDC last week outlined guidelines calling for HIV testing for virtually everybody. Cheeks said 14,000 people in Alabama are known to be infected with HIV. "We think there's another 5,000 to 6,000 who don't know they're infected." Alabama public health clinics test 120,000 people a year for HIV, and that number is growing. Getting more people diagnosed and treated sooner creates other problems. In the short term, the number of HIV patients is expected to increase dramatically, but there already are difficulties paying for antiretroviral drugs and clinical care, Saag said. "We are approaching a potential crisis in the availability of physicians to provide care for patients," Saag said. "Many private-practice HIV clinics are closing. Most academic institutions within the United States, including ours, are absorbing the cost of care for HIV patients." Cheeks noted that, as HIV-positive people live longer and healthier, there is a greater chance that they could be sexually active and spread the virus further. That's why more patient education needs to accompany the increase in HIV testing, Cheeks said. Already some people have reverted to risky behavior because antiretroviral drugs have created the impression that HIV infections can be controlled. "People just aren't afraid anymore," Cheeks said. "They just don't see people dying anymore." The disease thrives in poverty, where people struggle for existence and take few measures to guard their health, Cheeks said. "Their priority is just living every day." Twenty-five years ago, it was difficult for Cheeks to imagine a world with AIDS; now it's difficult for her to imagine a world without AIDS. "Most viruses have a life cycle when they die off," she said. "HIV doesn't." E-mail: dparks@bhamnews.com © 2006 The Birmingham News© 2006 al.com All Rights Reserved.