The Miami Herald, Inc.; Monday, June 23, 1997
JUAN O. Tamayo; Herald Staff Writer

TEXT: ANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic

To be HIV-positive anywhere in the world is bad enough. To be HIV-positive in a poor country is pure hell.

Thirteen percent of the people here still believe that AIDS is spread by mosquitoes, according to a recent Health Ministry survey. And 20 percent believe there's no need to worry because U.S. scientists have found a cure.

Janneli Cruz's sister has refused to see her and burned her letters since learning she is HIV-positive. "You say you have AIDS, and it's the last thing you say, because everyone leaves," Cruz said.

Maria Vidal has lost all but one of her upper front teeth to a gum disease, but public health dentists refuse to treat her because she's HIV-positive. A nervous nurse giving her an injection recently missed the vein so many times that Vidal wound up with a huge blue lump on her arm.

Petronila Brazoban broke her left arm when she fell off a motorcycle in 1992. A government hospital did an HIV test before surgery to set it and has been postponing the operation since it came back positive.

The next month, her landlord ordered her to move. A year later, her lover died of AIDS, but his family persuaded a friendly public-health official to list it as a heart attack to avoid the shame.

Kicked out of bed

Clara Jimenez said her cousin asked her to move out of the bed they shared after a doctor told her that "evil things like amoebas and bacteria emanate from the bodies of HIV victims" when they sleep.

She also has a worrisome lump on her left breast, Jimenez added, but has been put on a low-priority list for surgery at a public clinic because of her HIV. She can't afford the $15 she needs to consult with a private doctor.

Basil Antonio Abreu, 37, was fired from his Ministry of Public Works job in 1994 -- six weeks after his wife died of AIDS and he learned he was HIV-positive -- even though a 1993 law bans any firings of HIV patients.

Hospitals put AIDS patients "in the rooms all the way at the back of the wings or the ones next to the smelly bathrooms, the ones no one else takes," said Bartolo Reynosa, 50, a former lumber dealer who is HIV-positive.

"Maybe 50 out of 10,000 doctors in this country will treat an HIV-positive patient," said Martha Butler, head of a U.S. AID-funded program for HIV prevention and detection.

To make matters worse, many HIV-positive men continue having unprotected sex, either out of a lack of knowledge, carelessness or an active effort to hide their disease until the very end.

Kept it a secret

Caren Gonzalez found out that her boyfriend had AIDS only a few weeks before he died. Janneli Cruz said her lover refused to admit that he had AIDS until the end. "He lied, lied and lied," she said.

"Men never stop drinking and womanizing. They think they are invincible, and when they come to realize they are sick, then they want to take vengeance on women," Maria Vidal said.

It is, in short, a national crisis.

"AIDS is not a health problem here. It is a development problem that has to do with education, poverty, cultural prejudices," Butler said. "And if we don't attack it with jobs and education, we'll never get anywhere."

Even when relief seems at hand, it's all too often just a mirage.

Clara Jimenez and Maria Vidal went to a visiting Argentine "Doctor Arka" recently who claimed he had a machine that could kill the HIV virus if a preliminary test, with electrodes attached to each index finger, was positive.

The "test" was free, but donations of $15 were accepted. Jimenez noticed the test was negative for anyone who could not pay, and positive for all who donated money -- and perhaps could afford to pay for the treatment.

"If you had the money, you could be `saved,' " she said with a smile. "If you were poor like us, you went straight to the cemetery."

CAPTION: photo: Condoms are hung on a shelf of liquor bottles in a store in Santo Domingo (a)

PETER ANDREW BOSCH / Herald Staff AVAILABLE: Condoms are hung on a shelf of liquor bottles in a store in Santo Domingo, but many HIV-positive men don't use them.

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