Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1983. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The New York Times - December 5, 1983
Ronald Sullivan
The decision is regarded by public health authorities as significant because many AIDS victims rejected by their families and then by nursing homes end up helpess and abandoned after their hospitalization runs out.
The nursing home is part of the Baptist Medical Center, at 2749 Linden Boulevard, in the East New York section. Its executive director, Thomas J. Byram, said the nursing home division would admit its first AIDS patient later this month.
"Fantastic," exclaimed Barry Davidson, the director of the AIDS hot line of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "Up to now it's been impossible to get any nursing home to accept an AIDS patient."
Refused at Nursing Homes
"Wonderful," said Dr. Jose Giron, the chief of infectious diseases at Queens Hospital Center. "We've treated more than 40 AIDS patients here, and we have never been able to get any of them into a nursing home." As a consequence, he said, many AIDS victims remain in hospitals much longer than necessary. Mr. Byram said the medical center decided to open its 140-bed nursing facility to AIDS victims after hearing pleas from friends of AIDS patients. "As a religious and teaching institution, we did it because it was the right thing to do and because there was a need to do it," he said.
Mr. Byram also said he had received unqualified support from the American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York.
The Rev. Donald Morlan, associate executive minister of the 150,000-member Baptist organization, said that AIDS victims were subjected to a great deal of discrimination and that the church wanted to do something to counteract it.
The disorder primarily afflicts homosexuals and drug addicts. About 71 percent of the 2,803 people who have been diagnosed as having AIDS, are homosexual. About half of the cases have been reported in New York City.
There is no known cause or cure of the disorder and most of its victims die within two years.
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