| Page 4 of 4 < |
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)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Others cite lack of trust to explain their inconsistency in reporting. "If I'm a clinic, I'd think, 'Any data I get from AHPP is hard for me to believe. I don't know how they got the numbers, I don't know if the numbers are accurate,' " says A. Toni Young, co-chair of the HIV Prevention Community Planning Group.
Because Sansone's department is short-staffed, everyone's pitching in, performing multiple functions.
Volta Asbury, 51, is the office assistant. She enters death records into the database. She also does some field investigation at Washington Hospital Center. She has an uncle with AIDS.
"The thing about AIDS is, a lot of people think it doesn't affect them -- until somebody's infected in their family," Asbury says.
Tiffany West-Ojo, the 28-year-old surveillance coordinator, doesn't have a relative with HIV or AIDS. But at Tulane University, where she earned a master's in public health, she was known as the "condom lady." She was working for the CDC in Atlanta when AHPP offered her a job.
"I knew what I was getting myself into," says West-Ojo, who joined AHPP in June. "But if you're an epidemiologist who's serious about your work, if you're an epidemiologist who really wants to get out in the community, this is a place to be."
* * *
The backlog from 2003 to 2005 has consumed most of the department's time, but the problem of tracking the epidemic didn't start and doesn't end with the boxes.
The city's latest epidemiologic profile, available on AHPP's Web site, goes up to 2002. It reports that 41 residents died that year. Asked to confirm that figure, AHPP e-mailed The Washington Post an updated report listing 162 deaths in 2002.
Sansone says the discrepancy is due to "cleaning up the database."
"We can't release any reports -- of HIV cases, AIDS cases or AIDS deaths -- until we get through these backlog cases," says Sansone.
So far, Sansone and her staff have entered a total of 310 AIDS cases and 1,323 HIV cases from the boxes into the city's database.
And they have at least 1,000 more cases to go.
