THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 26, 1995 TAG: 9505260496
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
Chesapeake health officials say they were alarmed to learn that their city has the state's highest rate of HIV infection among women in their early 20s who gave birth last year.
The survey disclosed Thursday also showed that among all women who gave birth in 1994, those in Norfolk and Portsmouth - as well as Chesapeake - had rates double the state's for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The implications for Chesapeake are ``staggering and frightening,'' said Dr. Nancy M. Welch, Chesapeake health director.
Most of the women are poor and many are single mothers, so they are likely to have problems getting health care and taking care of their children once they get sick.
A third of the babies born to HIV-positive women get the disease from their mothers.
Health officials have little hard evidence to indicate why Hampton Roads has more of a problem than the rest of the state but they believe the figures reflect high levels of intravenous drug use in poor neighborhoods.
The numbers tell AIDS workers what they already knew: that for too long, public health policy focused on AIDS among IV-drug users without looking at the people who are sexually active with the addicts.
Local health workers believe that as many as half of the infected women aren't using IV drugs or doing other things that put them in a high-risk group. Nationwide, most men who get HIV contract it through sex with other men or IV drug use. Most women get the disease through sex with men.
``Chesapeake kind of views itself in many respects as above all this,'' said Welch, who is sending the information to the city school board. She says many of the infected women in their early 20s probably caught the virus when they were teenagers.
``I very much want the school board to be aware that we cannot consider ourselves immune from all those problems. . . because of our economic condition or because we consider ourselves a conservative community,'' said Welch, who says schools can help by promoting abstinence or the use of condoms.
Judy Cash is seeing the effects of AIDS among child-bearing women in Hampton Roads. Cash is executive director of CANDII, an agency that helps to care for about 200 children with the disease, most of whom contracted it from their mothers.
HIV-infected women, many of them low-income, single parents, often neglect their health because they are caring for their children, Cash said. They sometimes don't have people to turn to for child care, transportation to a doctor and other needs.
And ``when they become ill, they may not have support to take care of their children,'' she said.
CANDII - which stands for Children's AIDS Network Designed for Interfaith Involvement - has started a program to find adoptive homes for the children whose mothers have died of AIDS.
Health workers say there's a more fundamental challenge: getting women to take precautions with their sex partners so they don't get infected.
``We come from a culture where we just do sex, we don't talk about it,'' said Madge Young, coordinator of the AIDS outreach program of the Urban League of Hampton Roads. The vast majority of the infected mothers are black.
``We don't ask our black men, `Have you ever had sex with another man? Have you ever exchanged sex for drugs or money?' ''
Women who are economically dependent on men aren't likely to make an issue of it, even if they know the risks, health workers say.
Young's group has started giving out female condoms along with male condoms, so women don't have to persuade their partners to wear protection.
One of those working to get the word out is Ramona G. Smith, 45, a case worker with the Urban League program.
Smith, 45, found out she was HIV-positive four years ago. She believes she contracted the virus from a man she was once engaged to, a former IV-drug user.
She is still healthy and active - the virus hasn't developed into AIDS - but she arranged years ago for her two adult sons to care for her teenage daughter if Smith dies before the girl grows up.
Before her diagnosis ``the little bit I heard about AIDS was it was a white, gay, male disease. I wasn't a white, gay male - I wasn't dating a white, gay male,'' Smith said. ``That's the problem - you can't look at people and tell.''
The survey of AIDS rates is part of federal effort launched several years ago in 44 states.
Since 1992, every baby born in Virginia has been tested for the antibodies that fight HIV. Most of those babies don't have the disease, but have inherited the immune response from their mothers.
The tests are anonymous - any identification is removed from the blood samples.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention halted the tests two weeks ago, after critics complained that the mothers of newborns should be told the results. Blood is being collected and frozen pending a decision from the CDC. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
STAFF
1994 RATES OF HIV INFECTION IN CHILDBEARING WOEN AGE 20-24.
RATE OF WOMEN GIVING BIRTH IN 1994 WHO ARE HIV-POSITIVE
SOURCES: Virginia Department of Health, Chesapeake Health
Department.
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: AIDS STATISTICS CHESAPEAKE by CNB