AIDS REMAINS A THREAT

Per Capita Cases In L.B. Are Double L.A. County's Average

There is a tendency to shrug off AIDS as something out of the 1990s,
like flannel shirts. Wondrous new drugs have improved the quality of
life for those infected but the uninformed incorrectly assume that
the disease is as "manageable" as high blood pressure or diabetes.

That isn't the case. AIDS still kills. The drugs spark many miracles
but they also make some users feel sick and nauseated. Some patients
don't respond. Others can't stick to the pill schedules.

AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence but it remains a
scourge in Long Beach, where large swaths of the population are at
risk for infection. Much of the focus in town is on the highly
respected treatment options at St. Mary Medical Center and other
top-shelf programs, but prevention shouldn't take a back seat since
it remains the best option for those at risk.

This is why we commend the Long Beach Health and Human Services
Department and Comprehensive HIV Planning Group for making the City
Council and the community aware that the city's rate of infection is
nearly twice as high as the county's and more than double the
state's. Not only is the Health Department focused on increasing
funding for treatment options but officials do an excellent job of
promoting prevention and testing citywide.

The gay community is aware of the threat, since men who sleep with
men still make up the largest cohort of infections, about 45 percent.
But many younger gay men, who haven't seen their friends die like
those in earlier generations, aren't as careful as their
predecessors. They need a reminder.

So do heterosexuals. No one should consider AIDS "a gay disease."
More than half of the new HIV infections aren't in gay men.

Rates of infection are up for women and black men, two groups the
general public does not traditionally associate with the disease
(health professionals have been noting those trends for years). The
poor, former prison inmates, drug users and some minorities represent
risk groups. The young are also susceptible.

Not surprisingly, there is a connection between HIV infection and
crystal methamphetamine use. This deadly relationship, which the
Press-Telegram examined in its award-winning "Meth Menace" series, is
a reminder of the importance of treating drug addiction like any
other disease since it also "infects" communities like any public
health emergency.

Long Beach's rate of new AIDS cases, it has been pointed out, has
been higher than the norm for years, and the new data don't suggest a
major spike. But the figures are a reminder, one that many need to
hear, that AIDS didn't disappear with the headlines.

So with apologies to the 1990s, here's an old message that needs
replaying for the sexually active: Get yourself tested, limit your
partners, use condoms or abstain from sex outside of committed relationships.

Parents: Talk with your children about abstinence, condoms, drug use
and, most of all, self-respect.

AIDS didn't go the way of those flannels, even if the prevention messages did.