
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 2, 1992                   TAG: 9203020207
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

POVERTY POINTS . . .

"IN THE past, we had set aside money to help indigent patients, and it was fairly distributed over a large number of people. However, as the AIDS epidemic rises, we find more and more of our money is spent on fewer and fewer people. We don't know how to change the tide, and we don't know how to make the decisions as to who gets the money that we do have." - Sandy Ward, general manager, Dominion Home Health Care.

"Mother's milk is health insurance that is absolutely free. Yet in Roanoke, breast-feeding is at its lowest among the poor, who have difficulty affording formulas that average $150 per month."- Hope Trachtenberg-Fifer, a lactation consultant at Lewis-Gale Hospital.

"Monday is the most traumatic day of the week in the city school system. Weekends bring all kinds of disaster. . . . You cannot imagine what it is like to have four kids with a temperature of 101 sitting in the office." - Gail Geer, one of five part-time Roanoke city school nurses.

"What good is all the information we need to get to people . . ., if the crowd out there that needs it most is basically illiterate?" - Bobby Myers, business manager, Laborers Local 980, Roanoke.

by CNB