Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1991. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - TUESDAY August 6, 1991
Ron Sonenshine, Chronicle Correspondent
The 15-page report drafted by the county's Commission on AIDS says the North Bay county needs a nursing facility and emergency housing to help take care of a growing number of cases.
The report notes that "there are currently few or no beds available" to indigent AIDS patients in skilled nursing facilities and that there are insufficient hospice services. The document says an AIDS referral agency gets an average of 20 to 30 people a day requesting additional home care.
"It is either the (county-run) hospital or home," says Dr. Marshall Kubota, who sits on the 17- member panel that drafted the report. "There is a medical gap; we need a long-term nursing facility."
The reports says that if the county had a long-term nursing home for AIDS patients, the county's Santa Rosa Community Hospital would save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The commission is seeking about $250,000 from county and federal sources for AIDS services. Supervisors may decide today in Santa Rosa whether to finance a new shelter and nursing facility for AIDS patients.
Sonoma County ranks in the top five counties around the state for per capita AIDS rates. In June, county health officials reported the largest surge of diagnosed AIDS cases since they started tracking the epidemic in 1983. Twenty-two new cases were reported.
Since 1983, nearly 600 AIDS cases have been reported in Sonoma County, and health officials said about 3,000 people may be infected with HIV, the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The report is also critical of the 1990 closure of the only county residential AIDS shelter, which shut down because state officials said they did not have enough money to keep it in operation.
AIDS advocates said yesterday that the county has been too slow to act on the disease.
"People with the disease have been clear about their needs for years," said Kit Mellinger, a gay- rights advocate. "Now we have two pennies and need a million dollars."
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