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An Overwhelmed D.C. Agency Loses Count of AIDS Cases
Marie Sansone, who runs the surveillance branch of the District's AIDS office, says, "Our department's mission statement reads, 'to provide a comprehensive picture of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.' We're not doing that. Not yet."
(By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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By November, 59 more AIDS cases and 344 new HIV cases.
By Dec. 18, 110 AIDS and 107 HIV.
"We're surrounded by all these documents, all these cases," Sansone says, "and they're really all people."
* * *
Where did the boxes come from?
In June 2005, AHPP's offices in the Peoples Building in Northeast Washington were evacuated due to contamination in the ceiling. At one point, the staff was scattered to four locations. For more than a year, the room that stored boxes of lab reports, HIV and AIDS cases and death records was off-limits, with plastic sheeting over it. Plus, there was turmoil at AHPP. Lydia Watts, the 10th AIDS director of the 20-year-old agency, was fired after 11 months on the job.
Martin, who took over AHPP in September 2005, makes no excuses for the lack of attention to the surveillance department. "The only word I can use is neglect. There's been neglect to this part of the system for unfortunately more years than we know," she says.
Martin hired Sansone, whose senior management position at the city's Environmental Health Administration was being eliminated. Sansone needed a job. Martin needed a manager.
"Walking into it, you know it's going to be a mess," says Sansone, 50, who speaks in a soft monotone.
AHPP's surveillance department, she says, is like "a beat-up, very old Buick that hasn't had a major tuneup."
And the Buick is missing parts. She has a staff of 16, two of whom are consultants, and four of those positions are vacant. "Ours is really a bare-bones operation," she says.
Finding qualified staffers has always been a challenge, according to past AIDS directors. Money was a factor for years; compared with other cities, the District didn't pay much. The agency's reputation was another impediment. Joan Wright-Andoh, the surveillance chief from 1998 to 2004, says that for three years she couldn't hire a trained epidemiologist to analyze the data her office was getting.
