By Cathy Asato, Staff Reporter
The women who walk into the Health Force/Women Against AIDS office in Mott Haven often have hit rock bottom. But staff members cast no stones.
"We don't talk down to them," said Lisa Garcia, the senior coordinator for relapse prevention. "We try to empower them. They need to hear that they are important and cared for."
Since 1990, hundreds of HIV-positive women using crack or other addictive substances have come to Health Force, a nonprofit counseling agency. Most don't have homes, jobs or health insurance. Many have families to take care of. Some are trying to get their children back from foster care.
"We get them when they're raggedy, stinky and dirty," said Juanita Lopez, senior coordinator at Health Force.
Heavy heroin and crack use has driven up the overall HIV-infection rate in Mott Haven. In the South Bronx, the rate of AIDS cases per 100,000 women is 336.4, the highest in the city, according to Health Systems Inc., a research firm.
The 1,062 women with AIDS living in the borough represent 6.3 percent of all New York City AIDS cases.
The staff lets women speak their minds before offering them advice. Felicia Coleman, crisis coordinator for family issues, said she often tells a woman, "We have to deal with you first before you can deal with your children."
Often the woman needs detox first.
Brook Avenue, a notorious drug area, runs parallel to St. Ann's Avenue where Health Force is housed. The agency helps women find other drug-treatment programs, shelters and medical and legal assistance. Its staff also visits four homeless shelters and SROs.
Six or seven years ago, most women who contracted the AIDS virus got it by injecting drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Now the leading source is infected sex partners.
"This is a new phenomenon where women who don't shoot up are getting infected," said Michael Baker, director of special projects at Health Systems Inc. "In some areas, including the South Bronx, heavy crack cocaine use is associated with high levels of sexual activity where women trade sex for money or for drugs."
Vicki Perez, who runs Health Force's prevention programs, said that many women know the risks of unprotected sex some, but think their partners do not sleep with anyone else, so condoms aren't necessary.
The women Coleman counsels "are aware of the problem or of the high-risk behavior," she said, "but are under the impression that it won't happen to them."
Health Force has a peer-counseling program where drug-addicted, HIV-positive women can look to the counselor as someone who has turned her life around, Lopez said.
But some women go through counseling or detox only to show up high at Health Force again, said Martha Melendez, coordinator for relapse prevention.
"That's where our energies are concentrated -- in continual efforts and repetition," Lopez said.
To reach these women successfully, Coleman said, "We need to be there when they need us."