Pubdate: Sun, 18 Aug 2002
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2002 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Tracie Gardner
Note: The writer is director of the New York State Policy Legal Action 
Center and a member of the New York State AIDS Advisory Council.

SEX AND DRUGS

The United Way of New York City report on women and AIDS in the city's 
low-income communities may be new but the news isn't ["AIDS Hits Poor, 
Women Harder," News, Aug. 15]. Our approach to HIV as a public health issue 
has been stymied by political discomforts with issues that deal with sex 
and drug use. Why are we surprised that adolescents are one of the fastest 
growing groups to be newly infected when the firestorm around the 
introduction of the HIV/AIDS curriculum in the public schools still simmers?

For almost 10 years, injection-drug use was the driving force behind New 
York's pediatric AIDS epidemic. How could we have not noticed that these 
babies were born to women who themselves were infected through their or 
their sexual partner's drug use? What could have prevented this? The 
complete elimination of drug addiction, to be sure, or more realistically 
and immediate: access to clean syringes for injection-drug users.

The facts of this tragedy have been clear for painfully too long. Public 
awareness and public policy need to respond so that we are not reading this 
type of article again in 2003.

Tracie Gardner

Manhattan
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