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Aids - deadly disease of the 80s

A killer disease is creating a new class of lepers. LEE RUDAKEWYCH reports from New York.

DOCTORS and nurses treat them with great rare. Laboratory technicians and hospital attendants approach them with fear. Fellow patients shun them.

They are the new "lepers", the victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids).

Aids is a mysterious new illness, recognised about two years ago, which attacks the body's immunity against infections.

Diseases easily treated in normal people have killed seven out of 10 Aids victims so far.

“It isolates them from everybody,” a physician at a hospital near Philadelphia said.

"When it’s found out, nobody visits or goes near them.

"That’s bad because that’s when these patients need support."

Most of Aids victims are homosexual men but the disease also attacks intravenous drug abusers, haemophiliacs and Haitians.

Offspring of victims sometimes get the disease too.

Workers in a Philadelphia hospital refused to attend to Aids patients a few months ago.

A doctor at the hospital said the brief rebellion involved laboratory technicians and attendants who change bed pans and clean rooms.

"We had two Aids patients brought in,” the doctor said. "One had to be isolated because he was too ill to do anything for himself.

"He could not control his body functions. He vomited. A state like that is dangerously unsterile."

Care about sanitation when taking samples caused them to put him into intensive care with a large warning sign of Aids on the door.

"These things backfired on us," the doctor said. "They were noticed at once by our staff, who got the idea that the disease was very contagious.

Added to their fear, the doctor said, was the knowledge that the patient was doomed to die and that they would be risking their lives for nothing.

"We had to call the staff together and explain there was no risk if they took normal precautions," the doctor added.

When other patients saw the big warning sign and all the attention the patient was getting, they too became frightened.

The sign was taken down and doctors assured them they had nothing to fear.

In a few rases, doctors and nurses too shy away from Aids victims. A doctor said he had seen six patients and that was enough.

(Graphic: Aids ... No patient has been cured)

"There is a tremendous amount of scare, of neurosis almost, the way there is with herpes," said Dr Stephen Gluckman, who specialises in infectious diseases at the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia.

"In general I’m talking about homosexual men, he said, "although Aids is not a gay (homosexual) disease."

"The staff are afraid to the point where it is really interfering with their work,” Dr Gluckman added.

Doctors are mystified by the diversity of the groups getting the disease.

Because haemophiliacs have developed it and at least some victims are suspected of contracting it through blood transfusions, there is a suspicion that it is carried in the blood.

Experts cannot explain why Haitians have developed the syndrome.

One theory is that the disease started on the island. Another is that it was brought there by vacationing homosexuals.

Dr Gluckman's partner, Dr Michael Buckley, says the fear of Aids is unfounded.

He said Aids had never been shown to have been transmitted without intimate contact or blood contact through, for example, infected needles.

He knew of no medical worker having been infected by an Aids patient.

But once contracted the disease was fatal, Dr Buckley said.

“No one has ever recovered. It is a very scary disease from that standpoint.”

"But I don’t get too worried about catching it," he added.

"Other than being concerned about sticking myself with a needle, examining these patients is no more than dealing with hepatitis.”

- Reuter.

Probe on Haitian link to disease

By ART CANDELL in Port-Au-Prince

HAITIAN medical researchers are investigating the link between Haiti and acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The government's top health officials say Haiti has been made a scapegoat for the deadly disease.

Seven doctors are studying Aids at the Laboratory of Biological Investigations, one of the newest and most modern medical facilities here.

Researchers from the US Centre for Disease Control have visited Haiti to discuss the work here.

Aids, which destroys the victim’s immunity against diseases, has killed 230 out of 1,300 cases in the US.

Three fourths of the victims were homosexuals, and the rest were intravenous drug users, Haitian immigrants and hemophiliacs.

The disease is fatal to most sufferers.

The CDC researchers consider the Haitian link only one of many areas for study.

One investigator said: "Until we know the agent that causes the disease, all this is very speculative."

Speculation is a cause for worry here, where tourism has dropped nearly 50 per cent in three years.

"The foreign press, is printing statements which are totally unsupported,” said a doctor involved in the Aids research here.

Dr Volvick Remy Joseph, then Haiti's Minister of Public Health, said last month that American press reports were "nonsense” and "irresponsible”.

Dr Joseph said only about 50 Aids cases have been confirmed in Haiti. He said some estimates of the incidence were higher because of "misdiagnosis by inexperienced physicians”.

He said his department is working closely with US medical researchers to collect information from the cases in Haiti.

Dr Joseph said it was unlikely that visiting American homosexuals would have contracted Aids here because "homosexuality is still a taboo in Haitian society.

Dr Alvin Friedman-Kien, a New York university microbiologist who suspects Aids stems from "a combination of factors," said that several of his Aids patients had had sexual contact with Haitians.

A Haitian researcher said it’s possible that New York homosexuals introduced Aids to Haiti.

Reported incidence of Aids in Haiti dates back only about three years - the same as in the United States.

"It’s very difficult to know what that means,” said Dr Harry Haverkos of the CDC. - AP

References[]

Lee Rudakewych, "Aids - deadly disease of the 80s", The Straits Times, 23 April [1983https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/straitstimes19830423-1.1.57?ST=1&AT=search&k=23%20April%201983%20Straits%20Times&QT=23,april,1983,straits,times&oref=article].

Acknowledgements[]

This article was archived by Roy Tan.

Archive of "Aids - deadly disease of the 80s", The Straits Times, 23 April 1983

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