Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
BY LAURIE HAHN, Times-Union Staff Writer
At a Kosciusko County conference on the impact of HIV/AIDS on the county, Bowen said AIDS cases in rural areas are growing at the rate of 37 percent, compared to a 5 percent increase in metropolitan areas.
An area with a population of approximately 50,000 people or less is considered rural.
The biggest hope in controlling the AIDS epidemic, he said, is changing personal behavior: "Prevention is the most significant term in medicine today."
Prevention depends on education, he said, and education depends on several attitudes.
"The sensitivity and secrecy and emotional impact will remain high because we are dealing with the method of spreading disease that involves sex and love and the prevalent attitude that 'it just won't happen to me,' " he said.
Bowen, who served as secretary of Health and Human Services under President Reagan, cited what he called frightening statistics about AIDS:
• 18 million adults and 1.5 million children worldwide were infected with AIDS by the end of 1995.
• The majority of AIDS cases are in people between the ages of 25 and 44.
• AIDS is the leading cause of death today in men between the ages of 25 and 44 and the fourth leading cause in women in that age group.
• Because of the incubation period of 10 to 12 years, most of the adults in the target population who have AIDS probably contracted it while they were in their teens or early 20s.
Advances are being made in AIDS research, such as a promising new vaccine, he said, but "the biggest challenge and the best weapon is public understanding and education," he said.
He called for improving the delivery of treatment systems to AIDS patients, more treatment facilities and more research to "find out why people take the risk when they know the results could be disastrous."
Thursday's conference was organized by the Kosciusko County Chapter of the American Red Cross, said Rebecca Notestine, Red Cross executive director, to help find out what information is needed on the HIV/AIDS in this community.
Notestine said the Red Cross receives a steady stream of phone calls asking for the latest information about AIDS, and the conference Thursday was one way to get information out while finding out exactly what services are needed in Kosciusko County.
Bowen's keynote speech was followed by a panel discussion that featured Bowen; Robert Weaver, environmental and communicable disease scientist for the county health department; William Crane, human resource counselor and president of Genesis Management Services Inc.; Carolyn Cassidente, Bowen Center counselor; and Dr. Anthony Etienne, assistant superintendent of Warsaw Community Schools.
Etienne said WCS offers AIDS education beginning in sixth grade, and stressed that according to Indiana law, public schools must teach abstinence as the only method of safe sex.
Educating teens about the dangers of engaging in risky sexual behavior would greatly reduce the incidence of cases, Bowen said, but families and schools must work together.
"The reluctance of parents to permit sex education is one of the reasons for the tremendous spread of the disease," he said. "The very thought of AIDS and how it is transmitted is distasteful but we must put aside those feelings" and deal with it.
He said the number of cases of AIDS will continue to rise in the United States until approximately one million people (one out of every 250 people) are HIV positive.
"The number of AIDS cases and the deaths from AIDS is staggering," he said. "The AIDS epidemic poses one of our greatest public health challenges."
