Prevention Programs

Has the state of Maryland recovered sufficiently from the recession to absorb a 4.3 percent increase in state spending? Officials in the Schaefer administration think so, but legislators had better survey this $12.7 billion budget with a microscope. The last thing this state needs is another miscalculation that creates a huge deficit almost as soon as the budget is approved.The babble of budget bureaucrats makes it difficult to get a true picture of what's going on. The overall budget is indeed up by 4.3 percent, even though the growth in revenue is projected to rise only 2.3 percent.

Eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace is a daunting task. To achieve that goal, women's employment advocacy groups have worked to obtain effective laws and to educate women on how to file sexual-harassment charges.Progress has been made in both areas:* The 1991 Civil Rights Act, which expanded the rights of women to sue and collect damages of up to $300,000, was passed after the Anita F. Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings electrified the country about sexual harassment.* Because of widespread media exposure, many women know they can file charges and how to do so.But because backlash from reporting sexual harassment is often devastating, only 6 percent of employed women file charges, even though, according to a recent government study, about 85 percent of women have been sexually harassed in their work lives.

SOPHIA, the mother of three, works six days a week as a chamber maid in a Baltimore hotel. She receives no government benefits and spends three-fourths of her salary on rent.Her company offers no health insurance, and she and her three children struggle to make ends meet. Now her youngest has started crying from the pain of an awful earache. So Sophia faces the choice of taking her daughter to a doctor and paying for medication or paying this month's rent. All over Maryland families are having to make these choices.

Steve Kelly decided that instead of being angry and bitter over the murder of his older sister four years ago, he would channel his energy into something constructive.In several weeks, fellow students at C. Milton Wright High School will spend two weeks studying about fighting crime and assisting crime victims. Steve played a role in creating the program, which will be part of a life-skills class.If the pilot program is successful, the county Board of Educationplans to require the class to be taught in the other eight high schools.

WASHINGTON -- The global AIDS epidemic is worsening faster than experts earlier believed, according to new figures released yesterday by the World Health Organization.WHO predicted in 1988 that there would be a cumulative total of 15 million to 20 million adults infected with human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, by the year 2000. But in the last four years, substantial increases in infections in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia have suggested that the 15 million to 20 million total may be reached by the mid- or late 1990s, the agency said in a report.

The county's war on drugs has moved to Parole.In a move to better coordinate treatment and prevention programs, the Health Departmentmoved the nine-member Office of Drug and Alcohol Programs next to Open Door, a heavily used outpatient program in Parole Plaza.David W. Almy, the county's new drug czar, and his staff left theArundel Center to work more closely with treatment counselors.County Executive Robert R. Neall decided in May to place the office, formerly an independent agency in the executive branch, under the Health Department's authority.

WESTMINSTER - As the county's drug prevention coordinator a few years ago, Joanne Hayes saw a real need for a similar position in the Carroll school system.The district, she believed, needed someone to coordinate the many community and school drug education and prevention programs that had evolved since the nation declared war on drugs."A lot of ideas make sense," said Hayes, the mother of three adult children. "But not many are carried out."The idea of a coordinator in the schools, however, has been carried out.With money from a federal Drug Free Schools grant, Carroll hired Hayes last summer to be its substance abuse prevention school/community coordinator.

The best means to control rabies is prevention and county health officials, who have not forgotten the rabies epidemic that swept Harfordfive years ago, are again trying to educate residents that preventive treatment can halt the spread of the disease.John T. Lamb, director of environmental health for the county Health Department, said "The epidemic peaked a few years ago but you have to be concerned about complacency setting in."During 1986, there were 183 laboratory-confirmed cases. The epidemic nearly decimated the county's raccoon population.