The Associated Press; Sunday, December 19, 1993
Deborah Hastings, Associated Press

A 16-month-old girl toddled around her first home that wasn't a car or a cardboard box. She came here after her drug-addicted mother was sent to jail.

These tiny victims of abuse and neglect also were born to HIV-infected mothers, a double plight that brought them to Caring for Babies with AIDS. The 14-bed temporary home serves a small but growing population in need.

A nationwide study for The Orphan Project in New York estimated that AIDS already has left up to 40,000 children and adolescents without parents to care for them. The study, published a year ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, projected that number will double by the end of the decade.

The study's authors concluded "a social catastrophe is unavoidable" unless more is done.

"When I first got involved with this, I thought this is not going to be something I enjoy. This is children and death and dying," said Ginny Foat, 52, the home's executive director.

"You hear them laughing and playing and you realize that in many ways, you've saved their lives."

This work is not easy.

HIV-infected children often suffer nerve and brain damage. They are prone to diarrhea, vomiting, spiking fevers, painful rashes, and thrush -- a fungus that forms milky white lesions in the mouth and throat. Too young to understand why they feel so bad, some children lash out in frustration. After one toddler lost her ability to walk, she began banging her head against a wall.

Though they tested positive for HIV at birth, not all of these babies will develop AIDS. No one knows why, but the virus' antibodies disappear from 70 percent of such infants within 18 months.

Still, Foat and her staff take extreme care not to expose themselves or the children to illness. Employees with the slightest trace of a cold don't come to work. Walls are washed with bleach. Gloves are worn for diaper changes. Every substance that goes in and out of these children is monitored.

The 27 full-time caregivers tend to 14 children under the age of 5. Other staff offer family intervention services and counseling. Caring for Babies with AIDS also tracks for two years every child who leaves its doors. None has died.

The children are placed here by Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, on their way to placement in foster care or with other relatives. The beds are always full.

"The need is critical," Foat said. "If we had 20 beds right now, they'd probably be full, too."

Caring for Babies with AIDS occupies four houses in a commercial and residential section at the city's western edge. Its $1.5 million budget comes from government support and private donations. Capacity has doubled since the home opened in 1990.

Seated recently in the compound's courtyard, Foat talked over the laughter and chatter of children at play. Scattered about were pint-sized walkers for tiny legs that now buckle.

A gay rights and AIDS activist in recent years, she has lost five friends to AIDS.

"I got so angry, I wanted to do something to make a difference," Foat said. In the late 1980s she began holding monthly AIDS fund-raisers at a West Hollywood restaurant she managed. In 1989 she joined the board of a new group called Caring For Babies with AIDS.

A decade ago, while heading California's chapter of the National Organization for Women, she was extradited to Louisiana and tried for the killing of a businessman.

Foat was acquitted in 1983 and won't talk about that period of her life. "I don't ever talk about me anymore," she said. "It's not relevant to what I'm doing now."

Compared with other cities with large AIDS populations, Los Angeles has relatively few pediatric cases, which include children up to age 13.

This is especially surprising since Los Angeles ranks second among U.S. metropolitan areas in the number of adults and teen-agers with AIDS -- 21,704 as of September, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York tops the list with 54,716.

But in pediatric AIDS cases, Los Angeles ranks fifth, recording 146 since the disease was identified in 1981. New York, which ranks first, has counted 1,183.

Public health officials attribute the disparity to differences in intravenous drug use -- the primary route of AIDS transmission in heterosexuals.

Unlike New York and Newark, Los Angeles drug users are less likely to use needles, said Eileen Ritchie, a county Department of Children's Services program specialist who wrote the agency's AIDS policy.

Here, she said, "there isn't the same number of people shooting-up, or sharing needles in shooting galleries."

The relatively low number of children with AIDS has given Los Angeles officials more time to devise a countywide care system for them.

But with women among the fastest growing groups at risk for AIDS, the likelihood increases that more HIV-infected children will need places like Caring for Babies with AIDS.

CAPTION: PHOTO Ginny Foat sits in a room at her home for abused or neglected HIV-positive children (AIDS)

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