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by Val Ellicott
Staff Writer
Within the
close-knit community of poor farmworkers in Belle Glade's downtown
slum, an AIDS diagnosis is a difficult secret to keep.
"Once a person with the disease tells
one of his friends, it's all over the community," said Elvis
Jerningan, who recruits ghetto residents to participate in a
three-year study of drug use and AIDS in Belle Glade financed by the
National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Many AIDS victims try to conceal their condition
anyway. They fear their friends will reject them or their landlords
will evict them.
"There's an extreme fear of letting other
people find out," said Shauna Dunn, executive director of the
Comprehensive AIDS Program in Palm Beach County. "I've heard of
cases where people were asked to leave their homes."
Privacy is almost impossible in this friendly,
crowded ghetto, where residents spend their time chatting on street
corners outside cramped, crumbling apartments.
Even competing drug dealers share a single sidewalk
and socialize together. Talk on the streets frequently turns to sex.
"They don't have that much else in their
lives," said Heidi Andrus, an intervention specialist with the three-year
AIDS study. "One thing we see in the women is that the only way
they get a sense of self- worth is from having babies."
In fact, anonymous sex-- often involving people who
know they have AIDS -- is the reason health officials are losing
their fight to control Belle Glade's AIDS epidemic.
By now, ghetto residents easily recognize the
trademark symptoms of AIDS -- sudden weight loss, chronic diarrhea
and blotchy, cancerous skin. Even the small cans of high-carbohydrate
dietary supplement that CAP distributes to AIDS victims are a giveaway.
"Every time you see someone with one of them
little cans, you know they've been to CAP," resident Anna Ball
said. "Some of them tear the labels off, but you know anyway."
By some estimates, 1,000 of the approximately 7,000
residents living in Belle Glade's impoverished southwest section-- 1
in 7 -- are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.
Outreach workers say about two Belle Glade
residents die each week from AIDS. Studies show that HIV-infected
residents of Belle Glade' s slum area develop full-blown AIDS more
quickly than infected people living elsewhere, probably because their
health is poorer to begin with.
As a result, almost every man and woman living here
knows someone suffering from AIDS or carrying the HIV virus. Some are
losing entire families to the disease.
Wilma, 31, watched AIDS kill one of her sisters.
Another sister was hospitalized recently. Counselors say at least 10
members of Wilma' sfamily are carrying the HIV virus.
"I'm being careful," Wilma said. "I
ain't messing with no men on the streets. But if my old man gets it,
well then I guess I'll get it too."
AIDS victims can expect to be ostracized once their
condition is known. One woman said her brother, who recently died of
AIDS, experienced mixed reactions from friends.
"Some shied away, and others pretended they
didn't know until he turned his back-- then they'd talk about
him," she said. "A chosen few, including family, stuck by him."
The woman herself is an IV drug user, a group
almost extinct in Belle Glade since the advent of crack cocaine. She
says she has been on a waiting list for admission into a public drug
treatment program for six months.
She has tested negative once for exposure to HIV
and is waiting for the results of a second test. Too many of her
neighbors, she said, aren't as worried about AIDS.
"Most of them think it's a big joke until it
happens to them," she said. "They see it every day, but
they don't take it seriously."
*day 1 main story
*day 2 main story
*day 2 sidebar: 'Lot of
Sex Out There; Just Name It, They Do It'
*AIDS Facts
*top
SOLDIERS AGAINST AIDS
Four agencies are fighting AIDS in Belle Glade
today, spending about $800,000 a year:
COMPREHENSIVE AIDS PROGRAM
OF PALM BEACH COUNTY
* Financed by the federal government and the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, it spent about $225,000 in fiscal year 1988-1989.
* Helps AIDS-infected people obtain medical care,
home health care, transportation and social service benefits. Offers
some emergency financial assistance.
HIV PREVENTION CENTER
* Financed by federal Centers for Disease Control
through state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
* Shared $351,571 allocated for AIDS counseling and
outreach in fiscal year 1988-1989.
* Tests people for exposure to the AIDS virus and
offers AIDS education. Employs four outreach workers who counsel
AIDS-infected people and their partners and who distribute condoms
and pamphlets on AIDS.
C.L. BRUMBACK COMMUNITY
HEALTH CENTER
* Operated and financed by HRS. Some AIDS-related
programs financed by federal Centers for Disease Control.
* Shared $351,571 allocated for AIDS counseling and
outreach in fiscal year 1988-1989.
* Tests area residents for exposure to the AIDS
virus. Employs four internists, four pediatricians and two
obstetrician-gynecologists who provide outpatient care for AIDS
patients. Surveys expectant mothers who test positive for the virus
to isolate cultural reasons behind a failure to practice safe sex.
Employs one outreach worker.
HEALTH CRISIS NETWORK
* Financed by National Institute of Drug Abuse.
* Spent about $225,000 in fiscal year 1988-1989 on
a three-year research project that tests different approaches to AIDS education.
* Offers Glades residents $10 to $30 to test for
exposure to the AIDS virus and to attend group sessions. Sends one
outreach worker to recruit subjects and spread information about AIDS.
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