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Issue #216: February 12, 1999
fastfax is available by fax in the 215 and 610 area codes at no cost, or by mail anywhere for $20.00 per year, by calling 215-545-6868, and by E-mail by contacting and type the message SUBSCRIBE in the message section. Sources for some articles in this issue include AACO Update, Associated Press, Doctor's Guide Email Edition, DVHC Update, Indianapolis Star, The Lancet, Reuters, Seattle Times.
Mayoral candidates expected at FIGHT forum
AACO initiative to benefit newly-released PWA prisoners
Donor test highlights AIDS increase in minorities
TB easier to transmit than first thought
1 in 4 gay black New Yorkers said to be HIV+
HIV may evolve differently in PWAs with dementia
Seattle seeks "compromise" on names reporting
Managed care dominance grows in region
Indiana may mandate testing for pregnant women
Doctor accused of HIV misdiagnosis
U.S. soldier with HIV gets 3-year prison sentence
HIV and Immigration group offers assistance
Up and Coming: Events of Interest to Phila. PWAs
Mayoral candidates expected at FIGHT forum
Philadelphia FIGHT's annual AIDS Care in Minority Communities luncheon will feature each of the major Democratic and Republican candidates for mayor of Philadelphia this month.
The event will be held on Thursday, February 18th, from 11:30 to 2:00 at The Philadelphia Convention Center, Room 103, 12th & Arch Streets, in center city Philadelphia.
Each of the candidates is expected to speak on the topic, "AIDS and the Future of Philadelphia Neighborhoods." Democratic candidates expected to appear include State Rep. Dwight Evans, former City Council member Happy Fernandez, former Council President John Street, party activist Marty Weinberg, and former state welfare secretary John White. Republican candidate Sam Katz is also scheduled to attend.
Philadelphia's city funding for AIDS programs has been stagnant since 1993, when Mayor Rendell reduced city support by over $900,000 to its current level of about $5.4 million. Rendell's predecessor, W. Wilson Goode, established the city's AIDS Activities Coordinating Office in 1987 with a budget of $7 million, but reduced it to about $6.5 million when the city's fiscal crisis led to major cutbacks in social program funding in all city departments.
While each of the candidates is expected to pledge continued support for city AIDS funding, only Street and Evans have any kind of track record in the area. Fernandez has been silent on AIDS issues since her election to Council in 1987; as state welfare secretary, White opposed for two years an effort to obtain a waiver of federal regulations to allow for strengthened access to AIDS services by the state's Medicaid recipients. The waiver was eventually sought after strong pressure from AIDS activists and local hospital officials.
As the ranking Democratic minority member of the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee, Evans has consistently sought new funds for AIDS services from the state, but has usually been stymied by the GOP-controlled legislature. He also spoke strongly on behalf of Betak, the now-defunct AIDS nursing facility, when it was engaged in a battle with the state about adequate funding for its operations.
In 1989, Street, working with Goode, sought to slice the city AIDS budget by almost $3 million because of the city's fiscal crisis, but later worked with AACO to restore most of the funding. Since then, he has advocated from his position as Council President for increased funding for services to minority communities impacted by the AIDS epidemic, and has used his influence to shore up funding for a number of black gay organizations providing AIDS services. Street's opposition to domestic partnership legislation has discouraged many of his gay supporters, however, including those in the AIDS arena.
The FIGHT luncheon is the first organized forum for city candidates to speak specifically on AIDS issue since 1991, when the Philadelphia AIDS Consortium sponsored a candidate's forum on the issue.
Admission to the event is free, but registration required and must be received no later than Monday, February 15, 1999. For further information, please contact Kevin Pleasant at 215-985-4448.
Participants will receive lunch through the support from Abbott Laboratories, Agouron Pharmaceuticals and Roche Laboratories, according to a FIGHT announcement.
AACO initiative will benefit PWAs leaving prison
In response to growing concern at the difficulties that people with HIV being released from prison have faced in obtaining appropriate medical care and prescriptions, the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office (AACO) has announced that it will hire a new social worker with the specific responsibility for assuring that ex-offenders are linked to city health centers and a supply of medicine.
In its new newsletter for AIDS service providers, AACO Update, the agency said that "The new position will have responsibility for maintaining medical summaries of all HIV+ prisoners who provide authorization. When the individual is released, the social worker will transmit the medical records to the ex-offenders new primary care provider. Additionally, AACO will assure that any prisoner who requests it will receive an appointment at a city health center within 72 hours of their release; at the health center, individuals will also be able to replenish their medications. The social worker will also work with prisoners on discharge planning."
AACO currently sponsors an HIV counseling and testing program at the prison, as well as an AIDS prevention education project which makes condoms available to prisoners while they are incarcerated.
The new initiative affects prisoners with HIV/AIDS who are incarcerated in Philadelphia county prisons only.
For several years, AACO has supported a dedicated prisoner case management position at ActionAIDS, the state largest AIDS service organization, and AACO will support an expansion of that program this spring as well.
Kevin Conare, executive director of ActionAIDS, said the group will use the additional funding to support a new prison case manager who will provide direct services to incarcerated individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the Philadelphia county prisons and prevention case management to inmates at high risk.
"This is an expansion of the current prison case management program that works with incarcerated individuals in the county prisons and their families/supports on the outside. The prison case managers also coordinate closely with AACO's prison program and other medical and social service systems within the prison," Conare said in an announcement.
Conare said that "the eligible candidate should feel comfortable working in the county prisons and be committed to the lives of prisoners and to participating in a positive change for them. This is an opportunity to work on the front lines and make a difference where it is really needed."
Interested individuals should mail or fax resumes to ActionAIDS Human Resources-KJB, 1216 Arch Street, 6th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107, fax: 215-864-6930.
Donor test highlights AIDS increase in minorities
A new blood test being tried on first-time blood donors has confirmed researchers' suspicions about the AIDS epidemic - it is moving fastest in the U.S. southeast and among minority groups.
Dr. Michael Busch of the Blood Centers of the Pacific in San Francisco told the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in February that the new test is one of the few ways that scientists can track the rate of new infections with the virus.
"Because we know precisely the timing ... we can estimate the annual incidence rate," he said in an interview with Reuters. "We can now, for the first time, measure the incidence of infection in a large population. This tool lets us specifically monitor new infections."
Busch's team screened 5.2 million blood donations to the Red Cross, among them 1.8 million first-time blood donors. According to the screening, African Americans were 25 times more likely than whites to have a recently acquired HIV infection.
Busch said new infections were about three times more common among first-time donors than among those who give repeatedly. The analysis showed that about 2 of every 100,000 white donors annually are newly infected, compared with 51 per 100,000 among blacks and less than four among Hispanics and Asians.
The normal test that is used to find HIV is very sensitive, able to pick it up a week after infection. So the team developed a less sensitive test that does not detect the virus in the blood until about four months after infection.
People whose infection is caught by the normal test but does not show up in the less sensitive test would have to have been infected in the previous four months.
The researchers turned up 427 HIV infections and tracked down 281 of the people for interviews.
The bad news is that even people considered at a low risk of HIV are getting infected. The good news is there are not very many of them, Busch said.
"It's very reassuring. The rate of new infections is extremely low. It's mostly clustered in the southeastern United States," he told a news briefing.
The new incidence rate, he said, was five times higher in the southeastern United States than in the rest of the country. Most of the new victims found in the survey were poor or members of minority groups, such as blacks or Hispanics.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that matched up with what they had suspected. "We've noted these shifts to people of color in particular," said Martha Rogers of the CDC. "Certain prevention programs are being developed to target those populations."
Busch said the current screening system for blood donors, which includes a questionnaire about donors' sexual histories and lifestyles, effectively showed up traditional high-risk groups - men who have sex with men, drug users and female partners of men in those categories.
But the questionnaire does not ask about what is believed to be the fastest growing class of new HIV patients - people who caught the virus through heterosexual sex.
"If you had 25 heterosexual partners in the past month, you are still eligible to give blood," Busch said.
Among other findings of the study:
--The number of new infections among first-time donors remained steady between 1993 and 1996, the years sampled.
--Men were twice as likely as women to be infected.
--Infections among new donors were highest in the South, where there were 25 infections per 100,000, and lowest in the central and western parts of the country, where there were less than 2.
The CDC estimates there are between 600,000 and 900,000 people living with HIV in the United States. But that is only an estimate, because states do not keep record of new HIV infections.
Busch estimated that fewer than one in 500,000 blood donors are infected with HIV and he was confident that new screening methods would make the blood supply even safer.
Soon, an extremely sensitive test that looks for traces of the virus's genetic material will be used to screen the entire national blood supply.
TB easier to transmit than first thought
The standard test for gauging whether a tuberculosis patient is infectious misses half the people capable of transmitting the disease, according to a Stanford study appearing in the current issue of The Lancet.
After using DNA fingerprinting to track TB spread in San Francisco, the researchers concluded that patients classified as non-infectious by the test nevertheless gave rise to one-sixth of new cases.
"Only half of TB patients are detected by this test, yet the other half are still infectious and continue to propagate this epidemic," said Marcel Behr, MD, the study's lead author.
For diagnosing tuberculosis and determining the severity of a patient's illness, TB control programs world-wide rely on a test called the acid-fast bacilli (or AFB) smear. In this fast, cheap and simple method, a sample of sputum is inspected under a light microscope for the presence of tuberculosis bacteria.
Positive results mean the patient should immediately be placed in isolation in a hospital, because every cough could launch enough bacteria to infect many other people. Negative results have generally been interpreted to mean that the patient is non-infectious and requires no special precautions.
However, theoretical and experimental results have cast doubt on the ability of this workhorse test to detect infectious patients, said Peter Small, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and senior author of the paper. Although as few as five TB bacteria bedding down in the lungs can start a new infection, a sample must contain 5,000 to 10,000 bacteria per milliliter to reach the test's threshold of detection. Furthermore, epidemiological investigations show an elevated rate of TB among people exposed to patients who tested negative.
To verify suspicions that so-called smear-negative patients are infectious, Small, Behr and their colleagues mined a database holding records of all TB patients diagnosed in San Francisco since 1991. Among the information amassed by this joint project of Stanford, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the San Francisco Department of Health are results from smear tests and DNA fingerprinting analyses of each patient's bacteria.
DNA fingerprinting, a method for identifying characteristic patterns in DNA samples, is best known for its crime-solving prowess. But for epidemiologists, the technique affords a means of retracing a disease's movement from person to person in a community. Two patients whose bacteria have identical DNA fingerprints likely can trace their infection to the same ultimate source.
Small and colleagues grouped 1,359 TB patients into clusters according to their bacterial DNA fingerprints. The first patient to be diagnosed in each cluster was considered the source -- direct or indirect -- for all other cases in the group.
Of the 71 disease clusters, nearly 40 percent were initiated by a smear-negative patient, the researchers found. When these clusters were analyzed in detail, at least 17 percent of the patients had contracted the disease from a person with a negative smear test.
Small reaffirmed that because the test does identify the most infectious patients, it does remain useful. On average, AFB smear positive individuals are about four times more infectious that those found to be smear negative.
By clarifying the limitations of the test, however, the findings call into question TB control procedures in developed and developing countries, Small said. In the United States and other industrialized nations, the test serves to identify those in need of immediate, aggressive intervention. Such patients have long been the focus of TB control programs -- based on the rationale that they transmit nearly all new cases. But even in San Francisco, where health officials take great pains to identify and treat smear-negative patients, it appears that a significant source of infection has been overlooked, Small said.
The study's results, if confirmed world-wide, could have grave implications for TB control in the developing countries. There, shortages of money and facilities means that the smear test is often the only means to diagnose TB. Unlike in the United States, someone with a suspicious cough but negative test results is not given a further round of more sensitive tests. Instead, he or she is usually thought to be free of the disease and is sent home without treatment.
"A significant number of infections are caused by persons with negative smears but positive cultures of sputum, indicating that this group should be regarded as an important, albeit secondary, priority in tuberculosis control programs in developing countries," said Philip Hopewell, MD, professor and associate dean at UCSF School of Medicine and a member of the research team.
Tuberculosis kills some three million people each year, most of them in the developing countries. So Small and Behr concurred it is imperative that a new, affordable replacement test be devised quickly.
"For any other disease, we wouldn't tolerate a diagnostic test that only picks up half of the cases," Behr said.
1 in 4 gay black New Yorkers said to be HIV+
Almost 25% of gay black men in New York City under age 22 are HIV-positive, according to recent findings from the city health department, the CDC and the New York Blood Center.
Researchers also found that among young gay men of all races, "40% engaged in unsafe sex and a significant number recently had been infected." Richard Elovich, director of HIV Prevention at the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said, "It's really alarming news. We are not doing a good enough job reaching young black men."
The findings, which were compiled from interviews with 425 men aged 15 to 22 at gay bars, clubs and gyms, "confirmed what [health officials] already suspected: Public health campaigns haven't' been effective with minorities and younger men."
GMHC Executive Director Dr. Joshua Lipsman said that "younger men have a false sense of security because of 'so-called miracle drugs' and a dramatic drop in the AIDS death rate." He added, "They have not seen their friends wither and die," unlike older gay men who "still miss and mourn for friends and lovers who were taken away in the prime of their life." (This article is reprinted with permission from the Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, from a report in the New York Daily News. The Daily Report is published for The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation by National Journal Group Inc. Copyright 1999 by National Journal Group Inc., 1501 M St., N.W., Washington, DC 20005. All rights reserved. The Daily Report is available in its entirety free on the Kaiser Family Foundation's Web site, www.kff.org. You may also register for free e-mail delivery at www.kff.org/register.)
HIV may evolve differently in PWAs with dementia
HIV may evolve differently in the blood and in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with AIDS dementia complex (ADC), according to investigators at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at the University of California in San Francisco.
"Our data show independent viral evolution in the cerebrospinal fluid and plasma in subjects with ADC," Dr. Natalia Inkina Marlowe reported at the 6th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections last week.
Dr. Marlowe and colleagues examined the phylogenetic relationships between HIV in CSF and plasma in patients with ADC and in neurologically normal HIV-positive patients. Overall, they found "distinct sub-branches by compartment in ADC but not in neurologically normal subjects." They also noted "greater cross-compartment distances among ADC patients."
When CSF and plasma samples from 20 patients starting on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) were evaluated, they found that plasma viral rebound occurred in 6 of the 20 patients after 20 weeks, but CSF virus remained suppressed. Conversely, in a subject with ADC, virus rebounded in CSF but not in the plasma.
These findings suggest that ADC patients "may need drugs with a high capacity to penetrate the blood-brain barrier in order to treat HIV that is evolving independently in the central nervous system."
Seattle seeks "compromise" on names reporting
The Board of Health for King County, which includes the city of Seattle, has proposed that the county collect the names of people who are infected with HIV but change the names to codes before the information is sent on to the state.
The proposal is similar to one being considered in Harrisburg for application to Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, names on AIDS case reports - which have been required, by name, since 1981 - are routinely modified into a unique identifier before the information is sent to the state, and from their to the federal government.
The Seattle board also recommended that state officials require local health departments to destroy the names of those reported as HIV infected after 90 days, or convert the name to a code on the local level if they are kept longer.
The Board of Health said that it had developed its recommendations after reviewing information from three months of meetings between local health officials and AIDS advocates, the latter of whom have been uniformly opposed to any kind of name reporting.
The Seattle Times reported that the state Board of Health is likely to adopt an HIV reporting model by April.
The King County board also recommended that anonymous HIV testing continue to be available in order to provide options for those who might otherwise decline to be tested for fear their name might be revealed.
The board also asked that the criminal penalty for breaching the confidentiality of the HIV/AIDS list be increased to the felony level, and that an evaluation project be established to determine whether the new system is working.
Representatives of the Northwest AIDS Foundation, a strong advocate of coded identifiers in reporting, told the Times that the resolution was "not perfect" but offered added measures for protecting names. "The reality is that the State Board of Health is moving forward with a names-based reporting system. We worked hard on behalf of people affected by HIV and AIDS to erect a series of critical fire walls," said Terry Stone, director of the Foundation, according to Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report.
Steve Johnson, the Foundation's director of public policy and communications, said the organization hopes to work with the state Legislature to expand the protections statewide, as well as with the CDC to adopt similar safeguards. "We hope that pubic health officials across the country will begin to take community concerns more seriously. This system will help minimize the deterrent effect of names reporting," he said.
Other AIDS activists blasted the name-reporting provision and vowed to urge that people be tested only anonymously.
"I feel like we've really been sold down the river," said Bill Lake of Positive Voice Washington, a PWA coalition.
But health board Chairman Greg Nickels praised the resolution as an excellent compromise.
"I think this measure will protect confidentiality and also save lives," Nickels said.
Kansas bill takes other view.
Meanwhile, in Kansas, a bill introduced in the legislature would eliminate anonymous testing for HIV and would require people testing positive to be reported to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The bill was proposed by State Rep. Melvin Neufeld, who unsuccessfully proposed a similar bill last year.
While many AIDS advocates opposed the previous bill, a number have expressed support for the new measure, noting that people in the AIDS community had input into the new legislation and that the bill promises strict confidentiality.
Managed care dominance grows in region
Managed care enrollment in the region is up to 64 percent as of June 1998, an increase of 7.2 percent from the previous year.
The enrollment percentage is expected to reach 70 percent of the insured population by the end of the year.
During the year June 1997 to June 1998, Aetna U.S. Healthcare's enrollments here decreased about 1.7 percent including a 5.6 percent decline in the company's commercial HMO enrollments. Medicare enrollment, however, for Aetna U.S. Healthcare increased 13.2 percent, and its "preferred provider organization" product increased 7.1 percent.
Keystone East, by contrast, saw a 7.7 percent overall increase in enrollment, with its commercial HMO enrollment up 19.4 percent.
Under the state's HealthChoices program, Medical Assistance managed care penetration remains steady at approximately 94 percent. However, the trend of declining MA enrollment in the region continues. Since January 1996, the region has experienced an enrollment decrease of 101,167 beneficiaries, a 17 percent decline. Within the last year, the region has experienced a 6.3 percent decrease in MA enrollment.
Meanwhile, Keystone Mercy continues to hold the largest market share, although it has dropped slightly in the last eight months.
Ridge Administration officials announced last week that they will delay the expansion of the HealthChoices program to the Lehigh-Capital region, in rural Pennsylvania, until mid-2001, because of concerns that the traditional managed care model might not be effective in the region. (DVHC Update)
Indiana may mandate testing for pregnant women
A new measure in the Indiana Senate would require mandatory testing of all pregnant women for HIV, if passed. State Senator Patricia Miller, who introduced the legislation, said she was concerned about infants becoming infected from mothers who are not aware of their infection. Statistics show that 24 infants were born to HIV-infected women in Indiana in 1997, but that does not mean that all the infants were actually infected. The senator acknowledged that the bill would face opposition from those who find it obtrusive or who fear it would cause some expecting mothers to avoid getting prenatal care; but on her side she has the Indiana State Medical Association, which has called the legislation a "high priority."
Doctor accused of HIV misdiagnosis
An Ohio man has sued his former doctor for allegedly misdiagnosing him with HIV and then prescribing a potent drug that had to be taken each day for more than six years.
Mark Savage contends he was never even tested for HIV by Dr. David Blatt and his colleagues at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago.
Savage is a 43-year-old flight attendant who has since moved from Chicago to Dayton, Ohio. His lawsuit says he was diagnosed with HIV infection in July, 1990 and treated with AZT and other AIDS-fighting drugs through 1996.
In addition to "extreme mental pain and suffering," Savage's lawsuit says he experienced such AZT-induced side effects as tingling hands, vision and bowel problems, and depression.
In 1997, Savage's Ohio doctor questioned his lack of symptoms and ordered tests that determined he was not infected.
"He was so ecstatic and relieved," said Savage's attorney, Valerie Leopold. "It really gave him a new lease on life. Then after that began wearing off, questions developed and anger developed.
"And then concern developed about, 'Gosh, am I the only one?'"
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks more than $50,000 in damages each from Illinois Masonic, Blatt and Triad Health Practices, his clinic.
Carmeline Esposito, a spokeswoman for Illinois Masonic, said lawyers were still reviewing the case.
Dr. Catherine Creticos, a Chicago-based infectious disease specialist, said it is standard procedure to do several tests to determine if a patient is HIV-positive. However, in 1990 some tests used today didn't exist, she said.
Another test available at the time - the standard HIV antibody test -- can turn from positive to negative but only in rare cases in the last stages of the disease, when the body is no longer able to produce antibodies to fight off the virus, she said.
U.S. soldier with HIV gets 3-year prison sentence
A female U.S. soldier infected with the AIDS virus will spend three years in a military prison for having unsafe sex with nine men, the Army has announced.
Pfc. Gerland Squires, a 21-year-old stationed at Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground, had pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault and disobeying a superior officer, who told her to tell sex partners of her medical condition and insist they use a condom. A court-martial panel that accepted her plea imposed the prison sentence.
As part of her punishment, Squires would also receive a bad conduct discharge, have her rank reduced from private first class to private and forfeit pay and benefits.
She had faced a maximum penalty of 77 years in prison.
But Army spokesman John Yaquiant said the case would be appealed automatically to the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals in Washington, which could set aside her conviction or reduce the sentence.
Squires testified before the panel that she was diagnosed with the HIV virus that causes AIDS in 1997 while undergoing a medical examination for a marriage license. Her fiance broke off their engagement and she became pregnant two months later, giving birth to a daughter who is now nine months old and HIV positive.
After arriving last January at Aberdeen Proving Ground, a military installation rocked by a sex scandal two years ago, Squires was ordered not to have unsafe sex by her commanding officer.
But the Army said she proceeded to do so with three civilians and six enlisted men between February and October 1998 without telling them she was HIV positive. All nine men have since tested negative for the virus.
The U.S. armed forces have had a number of similar cases involving soldiers who are HIV positive, including a 1994 court martial at an Air Force base in Texas which is now on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1997, Aberdeen Proving Ground was at the center of one of the U.S. military's biggest sex scandals after female recruits accused a dozen drill instructors of forcing them to have sex.
Of the 12 instructors charged, six were court-martialed, four were discharged and another was disciplined by his own commander. The charges against one instructor were dropped.
HIV and Immigration group offers assistance
The HIV and Immigration Working Group began one year ago as a collaborative effort to provide free legal services and access to medical and social services to non citizens living with HIV and AIDS. The Working Group consists of 14 community based organizations, and was funded by a grant from the Emma Lazarus Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation.
The Working Group meets monthly to address the unique legal, medical and social service needs of HIV infected non citizens. The Working Group serves individuals whose countries of origin include Latin American, African, Caribbean, Central American, Asian and Eastern European countries. The goals of the HIV and Immigration Working Group are to provide direct services to non citizens living with HIV and AIDS, and to work to increase public/provider awareness regarding immigrant issues.
Individuals seeking assistance are urged to call: AIDS Law Project of PA, (215) 587-9377, GALAEI Project, (215) 985-3382 (Spanish speaking clients), or ASIAC (215) 563-2424 (Asian speaking clients).
Members of the HIV and Immigration Working Group include: AIDS Law Project of PA, GALAEI, AACO, ASIAC, Health Federation of Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services, CHOICE, Intercultural Family Services, Inc., North Philadelphia Health System/St. Joseph Hospital, TPAC, Consortium for Latino Health, Nationalities Services Center, Empowerment Zone, and The Philadelphia Foundation.
Up and Coming: Events of Interest to Local PWAs
The Quaker Ministry on AIDS will hold another in its series of Spiritual Retreats for People with HIV/AIDS on Tuesday, March 16, 1999, at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center near Philadelphia. "The day will be devoted to non-denominational spiritual support to draw on inner resources for physical and emotional renewal," the group said. The event is limited to people living with HIV/AIDS, and free transportation is available from center city Philadelphia. For more information or to register, call Ray Bentman at 215-985-1314.
The Metropolitan AIDS Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance (MANNA) will sponsor two events in March of interest to PWAs. The first is a breakfast seminar on the topic, "Cocktails and Hors d'Oeuvres: The Relationship Between Food and Meds, a discussion of food restrictions related to AIDS medications, how to eat while on medication, etc. Lidia Gajewski-Derbanmac, PharmD, of Stadtlanders Pharmacy, will be the guest speaker at the event, which takes place on Friday, March 19, 1999 from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at MANNA, 12 S. 23rd Street (8use Ranstead Street entrance). Registration is required by calling 215-496-2662 by March 16th.
On March 25th, MANNA will begin a six-week series called "Eating Well," a free cooking and nutrition class for people with HIV/AIDS. The series is taught by MANNA's chef, Beth Russell, and its dietitian, Flora Baker, on six Thursdays from 3-5 pm. Groceries are provided after each class so that participants can prepare the demonstrated meal at home. Pre-registration for the series is required; call Flora at 215-496-0996.
Finally, three companies seeking to test new microbicides - medications that can be used in addition to condoms to improve protection against HIV transmission - will hold a community forum on their efforts on Thursday, February 25th, at 7 pm at the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, 330 South 13th Street. Refreshments will be served. Biosyn, Procept and Gilead Sciences will make presentations, as well as Philadelphia physician David Metzger, MD, principal investigator of the HIVNET Microbicide Study in Philadelphia, Dr. Zeda Rosenberg of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, and local activist Anna Forbes, on behalf of the Alliance for Microbicide Development.
For more information, call 800-324-1895 ext. 1, or email Anna Forbes at
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