Word: deaf
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...average hospital's public address system, non-ASL-trained staff and often complex written directions and appointment schedules are daunting for most deaf people even if they are just having their tonsils out. For AIDS patients, who may see half a dozen specialists for various complaints, the difficulties constitute a diabolical maze. Nor do many doctors reach out to make things easier. Most AIDS caseworkers with deaf clients can name one who was simply handed a piece of paper saying, "You have AIDS," with no follow- up. Quanquilla Mason, a deaf and blind New Yorker who has since died, remembered...
...about 100 activists across the country formed the National Coalition on HIV and the Deaf Community. Its members work at a scattering of clinics and outreach programs for the deaf. Some have drafted pamphlets using sign- language pictographs and explicit illustration to overcome the literacy problem. (A sample title: "AIDS -- WHAT MEANS? AIDS -- HOW STOP? LEARN ABOUT AIDS!") Others, noting, as one put it, that "the written language of ASL is videotape," have taken to camcorders. An HIV-AIDS hot line accessible to the deaf using small teletypes called TTYs can be reached at 800-243-7889. But few activists...
...case in point is Kennedy's Los Angeles-based AIDS Education/Services for the Deaf, pre-eminent in its field in 1990 thanks to a three-year, $432,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. AESD barnstormed the country, giving three-day training classes to hundreds of deaf activists on how to alert people to this "new" disease. They were a hit in 25 cities and < were invited to 37 more. But the grant was not renewed. AESD had failed, like most other deaf AIDS organizations, to fulfill a basic requirement for steady government funding: a tally...
...price of that failure is high. The Washington watchdog group AIDS Action Council can locate "no clear public funding stream" for deaf people. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control, tallying informally, are unable to name major current programs totaling more than $200,000. "In practical terms, that's two, possibly three salaries," including the necessary coverage of employees' health care, says the Rev. Margaret Reinfeld, an official at the AIDS organization AMFAR (American Association for AIDS Research) who recently sat on a CDC external review for prevention programs. "There's absolutely no question that the resources are grossly insufficient...
Warren Buckingham, until a month ago special assistant to Clinton AIDS policy coordinator Kristine Gebbie, agrees that not enough is happening. "There is a clear recognition that the deaf may be at special risk and may not be getting the lifesaving prevention messages their community needs," he says. "It may be time for the CDC and others to say very explicitly to ((geographic)) communities seeking funding, 'You must also carefully consider the needs of deaf persons.' " Buckingham claims that Gebbie would be willing to meet with deaf activists on the issue...