Announces that the nation's first comprehensive health and social
service center for women 'infected and affected' by AIDS, the Iris House
in New York's East Harlem, will open its doors in February. Women as
overlooked or miscast in AIDS epidemic; Women as fastest growing group
with AIDS in United States; Statistics; Government's expansion of
definition of the disease; How the center came into being;
Details.
By
Wendy Cole, published on March 01, 1993
AIDS Epidemic
The nation's first comprehensive health and social service center
for women "infected and affected" by AIDS is just about to be born.
February, Iris House, named for AIDS activist and poet Iris de la Cruz,
opens its doors in New York's depressed East Harlem.
"The approach embodied in this facility will set a precedent and be
a model for the entire nation," says Ruth Messinger, Manhattan borough
president. "Women together, struggling against ignorance and fear, have
offered us a vision of a better way to engage the difficult and
frightening questions that surround HIV infection." The center offers a
broad spectrum of services including legal advocacy, psychological
counseling, child care, housing referrals, and job referrals.
Until now, women have been either overlooked or miscast in the AIDS
epidemic. Research studies, treatment trials, and diagnostic definitions
have largely ignored them as patients, or dwelled on them as agents of
HIV virus transmission to a fetus or to a man - though studies now show
that infected men are 10 times more likely to spread the virus through
sex than the other way around.
Because more than 90 percent of the reported full-blown AIDS cases
have occurred in men, the assumption has been that it's not really a
"woman's disease." But in the US., women now comprise the fastest growing
group of people with AIDS - and this was before the government expanded
the definition of the disease in January to include medical conditions
more typical of women's pattern of infection. The definition also affects
eligibility for disability payments and other health and social
benefits.
"It's ironic that women who have long known what was wrong with
them are celebrating the fact that they are now allowed to call their
disease AIDS," said Terry McGovern, director of the HIV Law Project in
New York City, who helped push for the new ruling.
As of December 1992, some 27,000 women had been diagnosed with
AIDS, while at least 150,000 were HIV-infected. Under the expanded
definition, the reported number of new cases could double over the next
year.
Women's health activists realized long ago there are some services
they can't wait around for the government to offer. Three years ago a
small support group of women with AIDS began meeting at the Manhattan
borough president's office to share concerns and information about the
disease. The new center is an outgrowth of this monthly gathering.
