Transcript for the Piece Audio version of AIDS in Rural Georgia

INTRO: In the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic came to Georgia is was a disease seen mostly in IV drug users and in young homosexual men living in urban areas. But over the past ten year the character of the AIDS epidemic has changed. It is now seeing the largest growth in rural areas and among African Americans.

Philip Graitcer (GREAT-sir) has this report:
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20 years ago, a woman we?ll call Susan was living in Americus.

ACTAID1(female AIDS patient): I was an IV drug user and then I was pretty promistrous (sp) in those days.

Susan got Aids most likely through a contaminated needle and maybe form sex, she?s not sure. That?s how AIDS spread in the 1980s.

Education and outreach in the gay and drug using community followed and the numbers dropped.

Since 1994, new number of new cases of AIDS in Georgia has decreased by 42 percent. But the news is not all good.

Today, the majority of new aids cases are among African Americans and the epidemic is growing proportunately faster in rural areas and small towns. One third of all aids cases in Georgia are now outside Metro Atlanta.

Harold Katner is an infectious disease physician at the Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon.

ACT09: 40-41 percent of my cases are females. Now that?s a lot higher than the 27 percent national average being female. So the percentages are much higher among women in this community as well.

Katner serves a rural population in central and South Georgia. He says the women he sees are not promiscuous and they don?t use IV drugs. He says they are getting AIDS from their regular partner, who may have gotten infected in prison or was in a prior homosexual relationship. In small communities ? and especially in the black community ? Katner says being gay is frowned upon.

ACT15: these men are going back in the closet because the fear of discrimination ? they lose their jobs, they lose their insurance, their families reject them because they are gay, they get beaten up in high school because they are gay, one of them told them they are going to hell if they didn?t change because the minister said you better change. So they do change but in the process what they are doing is that they are bringing the population into the female population.

Because of their fear of being identified as a homosexual or as having AIDS, Katner says people in rural communities hesitate to go to the local health clinic or physician for testing or treatment.

ACT37: It is absolutely horrible for them. I just sent a woman home who I?ve begged her over and over again to take medication, to come see us on a regular basis, now that she is dying of the disease she is now taking her medications. Because the stigma of this disease is so great, a lot of them drop out of care because they don?t want anybody to find out and they won?t come back until they are deathly ill, and its because they are afraid of the stigma. That is driving the epidemic of late stage disease is the fear of therapy, the fear of people finding out about you and stigmatizing you.

Some county health departments and satellite clinics provide comprehensive AIDS testing, counseling and therapy, and these services are often free of charge. But ignorance about AIDS and how to prevent it has limited the effectiveness of these services says Katner

ACT 34. It?s frightening when you talk to the patients and they say they have no idea who they?ve caught this. 78 If we educated our people, made them understand how severe this is and how this can be prevented, I really believe we could stop this disease.

Katner knows he is fighting an uphill battle. He says rural schools don?t teach about AIDS and sex education calls, he says, are too basic. Meanwhile Georgia had the 8th highest number of aids cases in the United States last year.

I?m Phillip Graitcer.