Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - 13 March 1996, p.A11
Peter Fimrite, Chronicle East Bay Bureau
The proposed reorganization is part of an effort by the county Department of Public Health to combine resources and reduce the number of health service divisions from 11 to five. The Office of AIDS has refused to go along with the consolidation plan, prompting county officials to place its director, Eugene Richards, on administrative leave.
In a news conference yesterday, members of the county AIDS Advisory Board blasted the proposed consolidation as an ill-conceived plan that could end up leaving AIDS patients with worse care and local programs with less state and federal money.
They pointed to a recent report by a team of health experts -- assembled by the American Lung Association -- that criticized the health department's handling of tuberculosis cases as proof of mismanagement.
"We cannot afford to have the Office of AIDS placed under a grossly mismanaged division of the Department of Public Health," said Yvette Flunder, who co-chairs the African American AIDS Coalition. "We are in the midst of a pandemic. It's not the flu. It's not the measles. It's AIDS, and it needs to get very special treatment."
The AIDS office has 29 employees and funnels money to 53 providers who offer AIDS education, services, counseling and care. The county budgets $1.9 million for the office each year and gets $6 million in matching federal and state dollars.
The consolidation, which would be done in phases over the next year, reorganizes the department into five divisions covering environmental health, communicable diseases, emergency medical services, family health and community health services.
Arnold Perkins, the county's public health director, said only a small group of AIDS providers is opposed to the plan, and the opposition is based on false premises. He said the same amount of money will continue to be spent on fighting AIDS.
"The reason the AIDS office is becoming a part of communicable diseases is so people can get more services, not less," Perkins said, adding that many AIDS patients have tuberculosis, which would be part of the same division.
"Right now, with them being isolated, they are not getting a full range of public health services," he said.
Alameda County has one of the highest AIDS transmission rates in the state among African American teenagers, young adults, women and heterosexuals. Since 1979, 4,242 cases have been diagnosed. In the first three quarters of 1995, 232 people were diagnosed with AIDS, 201 of whom were male.
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