xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (07/31/90)
[Note: this was posted a few weeks ago in assorted soc groups. Mr. Dolan had originally sent me a "pointer" message to this article; I asked him instead to send me the article. Between my summer vacation (which lasted a few days longer than expected) and the fact that this was packed in a shell archive, it took me a little longer than expected to post this. --CLT] A report on AIDS among women, from National Public Radio's All Things Considered for 10 July 1990. Transcribed without permission from a tape of the report, by Kent Paul Dolan. Spelling of names is probably in error, text is otherwise trustworthy (I finally bought a tape recorder with a foot control for doing these). The transcriber takes no responsibility for the facts reported, they are furnished only for the amusement of the net. Spelling errors are mine, grammer errors are those of the speakers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | (Announcer:) | | Researchers tell us AIDS is already the #10 cause of death | among women. | | Here is a report from our correspondent Patricia Nemand. | | (Nemand:) | | A continued increase in the incidence of AIDS among women of | child bearing age is expected. | | The disease had already struck hard among men who use i.v. | drugs; many of these women are their sexual partners, and | even more use drugs themselves. | | Epidemiologist Susan Chu, who headed the research, says | black women are nine times more likely to die from AIDS than | white women, especially if they live in the northeast. | | "In both New York and New Jersey, AIDS," says Chu, "is the | now the #1 killer of young black women." | | (Chu:) | | That means, there are more deaths due to h.i.v. than there | are to cancers, than there were to heart disease, than there | were to unintentional injuries, which includes car | accidents. | | The death rate in New Jersey, for example, in black women, | was about forty per hundred thousand. | | Those rates have been reported among women in the Ivory | Coast. | | (Nemand:) | | The Ivory Coast is a west African country with an extremely | high rate of h.i.v. infection. | | There are over one million i.v. drug abusers in this | country, and health officials predict over half are already | infected. | | As women drug users get sick, AIDS clinics like this one at | Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn will be overwhelmed. | | Last year, we spent four hundred and eighty six million | dollars on AIDS care; this year, we will spend more. | | "And now," say infectious disease specialist Sheldon | Landesmann, "there is another staggering, but somewhat | hidden, problem -- the children." | | (Landesmann:) | | These women have on average two or three kids apiece, | the majority of whom are not infected themselves. | | As these infected women become ill and/or die, or can't care | for their kids, that will certainly throw stress, great | stresses on other family members, and great stesses on the | foster care system, as probably thousands of these children | will end up without parents. | | (Nemand:) | | Landesmann says as many as one hundred thousand children | could be orphaned in New York city alone. | | In addition, they'll be six to seven hundred children born | every year infected with the AIDS virus. | | Kathy Eric is a nurse who runs a support group in the South | Bronx for women infected with the virus. | | "Many of them", she says, "had no idea they were at risk for | getting AIDS." | | This woman, for example, stopped using drugs years ago, and | showed no symptoms of the disease. | | (Eric:) | | She went into the hospital, she delivered her baby. | | Over a period of about a month or something, she got | notified that her baby tested positive. | | Then they tested the baby again eight months later, and the | baby tested positive. | | This was the first time that the woman had heard anything | about the fact that she may be h.i.v. positive. | | Then she took her seven year old kid to be tested, who also | tested positive, which means that the mother had been | infected now for at least seven years, or eight years. | | (Nemand:) | | How could it happen? | | Eric says prevention efforts are often insensitive, and | targeted to the wrong audience. | | Take, for example, condom campaigns. | | (Eric:) | | It's not, you know, the liberated white upper middle class | female that says, you know, "Honey, use a condom or else no | sex." | | It doesn't work that way. | | Culturally, a woman _can't_ go around saying to a man, you | know, "You have to use a condom because ... ." | | If the man isn't with the woman in the same educational | process where he can understand _why_ they should be wearing | a condom, then there are a lot of connotations that go with | that, of her saying "condom." | | The burden can't be placed on the woman. | | (Nemand:) | | And in support groups, in the South Bronx where the _man_ is | included, Eric says they've had good success persuading them | to use condoms. | | "But far more money is needed," she says, "for programs like | this, which are aimed at minority women in drug using | communities." | | "Educational brochures," says Eric, "are often useless, | because many women, especially in the Hispanic community, | don't read English well enough to understand it." | | "And efforts to be explicit, in pictures," says Jean | McGuire, with the AIDS Action Council, are often quashed by | timid health officials. | | (McGuire:) | | Proposals to kind of teach techniques around how to use condoms, | how to incorporate them in a sexual relationship and in a sexual | experience, things that reach beyond providing information and | into the how to's is where the difficulties start to surface. | | (Nemand:) | | "For example, in the Federal Centers for Disease Control ad | campaign, a man places a sock on his foot," says McGuire, | "while the magazine print reads 'Putting on a condom is just | as simple.'" | | Needless to say, the message is vague. | | "Changing behavior is not easy," says Jean McGuire and nurse | Kathy Eric. | | Both agree it will require more resources and clear | leadership. | | "If current trends continue," researchers say that "AIDS | will become one of the five leading causes of death for | women of child bearing age by next year. | | This is Patricia Nemand reporting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -- Yes! Nicely explained, even I understood it! Thanks. -- Charlie Sorsby