Subject: AIDS Cases Seen Doubling This Year In San Francisco
Date: Published: 3/8/84 76 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones Inc. 

   AIDS Cases Seen
   Doubling This Year
   In San Francisco
    ---
   Increasing Incidence of Disease
   That Destroys Immunity
   Strains Health-Care Units
    ---
   By Marilyn Chase
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   SAN FRANCISCO -- Doctors are predicting a doubling of AIDS
cases in this city to 1,000 by year-end, increasing strain on
the health-care system as well as the toll in human
suffering.
   Nationally, more than 3,600 cases have been reported to
date, according to the Centers for Disease Control in
Atlanta.  The incidence of AIDS has risen dramatically since
the disease was first diagnosed in 1980.
   AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is a
collapse of the body's immune defense system, resulting in
death by rare forms of cancer, pneumonia or other
overwhelming infection.  The disease strikes most frequently
at homosexuals, Haitians, intravenous drug users, and
recipients of blood transfusions.
   Compounding the human toll is a potentially crushing
fiscal problem.
   "The average hospitalization of an AIDS patient runs four
months and $80,000," says Dr. Selma Dritz, assistant director
of San Francisco's public health department.  One thousand
AIDS patients in the greater San Francisco Bay Area would
require $80 million in intensive health care, much of it
expected to be funded by the state's strapped Medi-Cal
program.  Medi-Cal is a state health-insurance program and
the counterpart of Medicaid in other states.
   The Bay Area currently has 517 documented cases of AIDS. 
But Andrew Moss, an epidemiologist at San Francisco General
Hospital's AIDS ward, has said cases now in an incubation
stage may add an additional 400 to 600 in the city alone by
December.  He expects 200 to 300 deaths this year from the
disease.
   Nationally, AIDS cases have surged to 3,646 from 1,300 a
year ago, said Harold Jaffe, an epidemiologist with the
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.  The disease has
occurred most frequently in New York, California, Florida and
New Jersey.
   Despite recent reports from New York that the incidence of
AIDS seemed to be leveling off, this isn't the case
nationally or in San Francisco, officials say.
   "It's no secret that AIDS isn't leveling off in San
Francisco," says Paul Volberding, chief of oncology and head
of the AIDS clinic at San Francisco General Hospital.  "AIDS
is already 10 times more common than all other cancers
combined in single men aged 25 to 45 in San Francisco."
   This places special isolated AIDS hospital facilities at a
premium.  San Francisco General's 12-bed AIDS ward, located in
a separate building from the main hospital, is full.
Expansion plans are under discussion.  Private hospital
facilities also are limited.
   The city is financing a long-term AIDS ward at
Garden-Sullivan Hospital, and more hospice beds are being
sought for terminal cases.  Officials note that all AIDS
patients eventually require intensive care in the terminal
disease's final stages.
   Dr. Marcus Conant, chairman of California's AIDS Task
Force, has described the burgeoning caseload as a medical and
fiscal "nightmare."

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]