Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune - July 27, 2004
William Presecky, Tribune staff reporter
More than 100 inmates attended classes, and 40 were tested for HIV in the first three months of the voluntary program, according to Clare Dobbins, administrative services director for the Kane County Health Department.
All the test results were negative.
The initial results of the pilot program was part of a monthly communicable disease report Dobbins presented last week to the County Board's Public Health Committee.
The program is funded with a one-year, $60,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health. It is one of three jail programs the department has funded statewide. The others are in Champaign and St. Clair Counties.
Although no Kane inmates have tested positive for HIV so far, public health nurse Mary Tebeau, program manager, cautioned against drawing conclusions from just three months of statistics.
"One of the reasons we got the funding was because in the past, we did have a 5 percent positive rate on all of the testing we did [of jail inmates]," Tebeau said.
"That's kind of a national figure, so we do know that we have a lot more testing to do," she said.
The Health Department estimates that about 500 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Kane County.
In addition to providing inmates with caseworker-led educational services three times a week using lectures, handouts and videos, the program provides confidential HIV testing upon request and also helps connect HIV positive inmates with the appropriate services following their release.
Kane's projected need for a jail-based education and testing program is premised on a national estimate that 17 percent of people with HIV/AIDS pass through the U.S. correctional system annually and the prevalence of the disease among inmates is six times that of the public, according to the report.
Tebeau said the program's goal is "to increase the understanding about the testing, about high-risk behaviors, and for inmates to understand that these [behaviors] are preventable."
"The big thing with HIV/AIDS and [sexually transmitted diseases] is that there is prevention and there is treatment," Tebeau said.
Kane's 400-bed jail, which is chronically overcrowded, records about 9,000 bookings annually, according to Todd Exline, corrections chief.
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