A feature article “The state of AIDS in Lancaster, Fastest-growing group locally: middle-age, heterosexual women” reports “With more than 47,000 new cases in 2007 (these are the most recent figures available), according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the disease is still being spread — the age group between 13 and 29 being the largest, according the CDC.”…
“The [Lancaster General Comprehensive Care Medicine – LGCCM] provides medical treatment, education, counseling, testing and referrals for more than 500 HIV/AIDS patients in Lancaster. About 80 percent of these patients are heterosexual and have contracted the disease through high-risk sexual contact or intravenous drug use, whereas the other 20 percent contracted the disease through high-risk homosexual contact…”
WATCHDOG:
Sorry, we don’t buy into what appears to be more LGH propaganda spread uncritically by the Lancaster newspapers.
First of all, LGH refused to fund the Urban League’s proposal to operate a full service, expanded syringe exchange here in Lancaster. Its purposes would be to help the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 heroin addicts to obtain treatment, and to prevent the spread of disease by testing for HIV / AIDS, providing clean needles to prevent sharing, and distributing both male and female condoms. (A decade old small scale exchange continues to operate weekdays from Bethel AME church’s office building at 450 E. Strawberry Street, funded by the publisher of NewsLanc.)
Secondly, despite good work of the above mentioned independent LGCCM, LGH’s own Suboxone clinic is a virtual sham, operating only half a day a week with a single physician and thus seeing at most a score of patients, many of whom previously had been treated elsewhere in the hospital.
Although a daily clinic would be cost effective in the big picture and of great service to the community, LGH’s interest seems to be to maximize show while minimizing expense, since only a portion of its costs are reimbursed through government programs.
So sad… considering the long term cost and human tragedy that could be avoided.
