Chicago Tribune - June 18, 2002
Jon Anderson, Tribune staff reporter

"We need help. Money, for what we do," Dr. Mario Alves said last week, leading a visitor through the portion of the clinical training area of the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry set aside for HIV/AIDS patients.

Named for the Indiana teenager who died after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion, the Ryan White clinic is a place that offers considerable dental expertise, along with nearby medical resources.

These days, the clinic is facing new problems.

First came the gearing down of the Northwestern University Dental School, which closed its doors last year. That sent a flood of HIV/AIDS patients to the UIC clinic, which mostly serves those with few financial resources.

Then came the budget crunch in Springfield, which may cut as much as $4 million from the dental college's state funding, an ominous development for the clinic--though exactly how ominous is not yet clear.

"We work on a budget of $340,000 a year," said Alves. "We need about $100,000 a year more."

Set up in 1989, the clinic's original goal was to see 60 patients a year. It now has a list of 2,000 registered HIV/AIDS clients who are treated for a full range of ordinary and extraordinary dental treatments.

"About 50 percent of our patients only come in when they have pain," Alves said.

He, in turn, encourages them to keep up their dental health, as a way of maintaining their bodily health.

That means regular checkups and prompt attention to such HIV/AIDS-related oral disorders as infections, tumors, abscesses, mouth warts, and dry mouth from HIV/AIDS medications that often affect the salivary glands.

Is the work dangerous?

Actually no, he said.

"The HIV disease is not airborne. Nor is it transmitted simply from saliva, which carries inhibitors. There is little virus in the mouth. The big risk is hepatitis--and venereal diseases," Alves said. Clinic staffers take normal precautions for dealing with medically compromised patients--gloves and masks--but do not double the thickness.

"The mouth is the chief of the body. Without the mouth, you go nowhere," Alves said. "The mouth controls the first phase of digestion. You need it for speech. It can bite. And be a weapon.

"... But it's also a fragile environment. There are 50 different lesions that can show up."

One task of the clinic is to convince HIV/AIDS patients that they--and their teeth--have a future, said Alves, who was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and came to the U.S. about 20 years ago. His wife, Marilda, is clinic coordinator.

The staff also is trained to calm patients down.

"Many of them are very scared," Alves said. "I tell them: 'Other people--with diabetes, heart transplants and other problems--have to take medications and live a healthy lifestyle. If you do that, you can live as long as they do.'"

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