Hiv

A group of Baltimore's health care leaders has crafted a plan to cut new cases of HIV infection by 25 percent by 2015, as part of an overall strategy to cope with a disease that has plagued the city for decades. The plan, scheduled to be given to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Tuesday, calls for attacking HIV/AIDS — which affects more than 13,000 city residents — at its earliest stages by limiting the transmission of the disease and pushing for more widespread testing. The goal is to cut the annual number of new diagnoses from 505 to 379 by 2015.

When I met a woman I'll call "Mary" in Luwingu, a remote district in northern Zambia, she had already seen three of her children die. She did not know that she had contracted HIV until she arrived at the clinic where for the past few months I had been supervising care for pregnant women living with HIV. Like many women, when she learned that she was HIV-positive, she required counseling to be able to grasp her situation - that she would need...

When Malcolm Coley was diagnosed with HIV, he began preparing to die. The Baltimore man, a former heroin user who suspects he contracted the virus by sharing needles, packed his bags and moved to Washington to live his last days closer to family. "I figured the end was near," he says. That was 1988. More than two decades later, Coley, 54, is, in his words, "still hanging around. " He traded drugs long ago for a healthful diet, owns his own home, works for a Baltimore nonprofit and volunteers as an AIDS educator, talking to students and adults about living with HIV. As advances in treatment have turned what was once a virtual death sentence into a livable condition, the HIV/AIDS population is aging.

Millions in federal funds used to provide services to those living with HIV are again flowing to local programs after a months-long delay. Eighty one Maryland health organizations rely on about $61 million a year from the federal Ryan White Care Act to provide services for those who can't afford their own care, and some officials said they had no choice but to trim their offerings. One of them was Moveable Feast, a nonprofit group that provides food to those who are sick, including 370 with HIV and AIDS in the Baltimore area.

When federal funds to help care for those with HIV/AIDS were delayed by a month or so by the budget fight in Congress this spring, the effects in Baltimore were severe. A Movable Feast cut food aid in half for most of the AIDS patients it served, and eliminated it entirely for their caretakers and children. The Moore Clinic for HIV Care at Johns Hopkins cut back housing grants and aid to help patients deal with diabetes and other health problems. Some 81 care organizations in Maryland have been affected by the backlog in payments caused by the bickering in Congress, and although they should be getting their full share of the state's $61 million in Ryan White Care Act funding within the next few weeks, real people have suffered in the meantime.

Federal dollars that localities use to fund care for those living with HIV have been cut off for months, leaving some who can't afford their own care without services. Millions in unpaid funds are expected to begin flowing through city and state offices to 81 Maryland health organizations in the next couple of weeks, but the groups say people have already had to slash their budgets for food, housing and some medications. "When you're on HIV medications, you need food, and some of these people have nowhere else to get it," said Tom Bonderenko, executive director of Moveable Feast, a nonprofit group that provides food to those with illness, including 370 with HIV and AIDS in Baltimore area.

In observance of 2011 National HIV Testing Day, the Harford County Health Department will offer anonymous, no-cost HIV testing on a walk-in basis on Monday, June 27, from 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the Health Services Division office on the top floor of 1 N. Main St. in Bel Air. The department will also have free refreshments and other giveaways. According to the health department, the National HIV Testing Day is designed to increase awareness among all populations and to encourage everyone to be tested.

If Phillip Tharrington hadn't been caught attempting to rob a Rockville store in 2005, he might never have gotten treatment for an HIV infection he had ignored for years. The 47-year-old said he was persuaded to get care after being sent to the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, where officials have been striving to identify and treat the disproportionate number of prisoners who arrive with chronic conditions such as HIV and hepatitis-C infections and diabetes. State data suggest there are now more healthy prisoners like Tharrington among the 26,000 incarcerated in Maryland facilities — and that's good public policy, officials say. More diseases are being controlled and fewer costly hospital trips are needed, making the system more efficient.

A hometown theater like the nostalgic Laurel Mill Playhouse on Main Street offers its patrons a chance to intimately experience the performing arts. Its current production, Jonathan Larson's internationally acclaimed rock opera, "Rent," plays up close and personal very well. Based on Giacomo Puccini's "La bohème" — the famed Italian opera about young Parisian artists plagued by tuberculosis in the 1840s — the Broadway production of "Rent" won numerous Pulitzer Prizes and four Tony Awards, closing in 2008 after a 12-year run. The show chronicles a year in the lives of poor artists and musicians struggling to survive in New York City's Lower East Side.

The party for some 400 of Baltimore's gay and transgender community of color, held at a downtown hotel, included fishnet stockings and stilettos, music and dancing — as well as bowls of condoms and free HIV testing. Inside the Sheraton Inner Harbor hotel, workers from the city and local universities were stationed at tables, armed with pamphlets about dental services, food stamps and housing, plus free goodies such as water bottles. Before guests could enter the main hall, workers approached them, promoting the benefits of HIV testing.