SEX AND DRUGS

The United Way of New York City report on women and AIDS in the city's
low-income communities may be new but the news isn't ["AIDS Hits Poor,
Women Harder," News, Aug. 15]. Our approach to HIV as a public health issue
has been stymied by political discomforts with issues that deal with sex
and drug use. Why are we surprised that adolescents are one of the fastest
growing groups to be newly infected when the firestorm around the
introduction of the HIV/AIDS curriculum in the public schools still simmers?

For almost 10 years, injection-drug use was the driving force behind New
York's pediatric AIDS epidemic. How could we have not noticed that these
babies were born to women who themselves were infected through their or
their sexual partner's drug use? What could have prevented this? The
complete elimination of drug addiction, to be sure, or more realistically
and immediate: access to clean syringes for injection-drug users.

The facts of this tragedy have been clear for painfully too long. Public
awareness and public policy need to respond so that we are not reading this
type of article again in 2003.

Tracie Gardner

Manhattan