A task force report on AIDS was unveiled Thursday night to Lake County health officials, calling for local hospitals to share responsibility for indigent AIDS patients and for a countywide safe-sex education program in public schools.
The report drew no comment from members of the county Board of Health, but one AIDS activist at the meeting said that the county was moving too slowly in developing an AIDS strategy.
Most of the county’s poor AIDS patients must go to Cook County Hospital for in-patient care. Lake County’s only publicly funded medical facility for HIV-infected people is an outpatient clinic.
Sending people to Cook County Hospital is like putting them on “an underground railroad,” said Tim Mahon, task force co-chairman. He warned that officials at the publicly owned Cook County Hospital is going to “come to a point where they say, `We can’t take your patients.’ “
But the activist, who said he has HIV and who asked that his name not be used, said that patients will resist not being able to choose a hospital.
“Of course I see it with more urgency than the board members, who will still be here long after I am gone,” he said.
Task force members are bracing for criticism from educators and parents who will balk at a recommendation that the public schools adopt a countywide safe-sex education program.
“Students are considered to be the most sexually active and the least likely to be exposed to information,” Mahon said. The lack of information is partly attributable to the reluctance of parents and educators to talk about the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.
“But we absolutely need (to address this) if we are going to slow the tide,” he said.
The Lake County HIV Task Force is the first suburban task force in the collar counties created with public funds to study and recommend solutions on how to provide public health care for people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Lake County ranks fourth in Illinois in the number of reported AIDS cases.
The task force was formed using a portion of an $18,000 grant from the state Department of Health, and it includes people with AIDS, community and business leaders, as well as health care professionals such as hospital administrators and physicians.
Before Thursday’s meeting, Martin Paulson, president of the Lake County Board of Health, said, “I don’t think we’ve satisfied everybody (with these recommendations), but are we working to satisfy everybody? Yes.
“Some (of the recommendations) will take a lot of time. It won’t happen in the next six months or the next year. Many will be years in the making.”
Other task force recommendations include:
– A countywide education program that targets physicians and health care givers about AIDS and HIV.
– An HIV-testing unit that can travel across the county offering free blood tests. A Board of Health clinic in Waukegan offers free HIV testing, but health care providers said that the tests need to be more widely available. They said the number of HIV cases in the county is under-reported because many people fall through the cracks.
– A plan to allocate a certain number of beds in nursing homes, hospices or other extended-care facilities for people with AIDS who need care, but not hospital care.
Since 1988, Lake County has had 199 reported cases of AIDS and 183 reported cases of HIV, according to the Health Department.
