Loyola is preparing to set policies and educate the campus community about the deadly disease now alarming the nation – AIDS.
“We don’t want to play ostrich. We want to deal with it intelligently and compassionately,” said Jo An Yerger, administrative director of the campus health center.
The university health committee will meet this month to shape guidelines Loyola would follow if a student or employee contracted Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, which destroys the body’s immune system and leaves it defenseless against even the most common ailments.
“This is going to be a big issue,” Yerger said. “It’s something very serious, but we feel relaxed about it. We know we have a terrible epidemic that we don’t have all the answers about, and we’ll deal with that.”
Colleges around the country are now forming strategies to deal with an AIDS outbreak on their campuses. The American College Health Association soon will recommend AIDS policies to its member institutions.
AIDS is transmitted primarily by sexual contact among homosexuals. But, uncertainty about how contagious the disease might be has spread panic outside gay communities and made AIDS the nation’s number one health concern.
Recent discoveries of the AIDS virus show it can be carried in body fluids such as saliva, semen, tears, feces, vaginal fluid, white blood cells, plasma and possibly sweat.
About a million and a half people are infected with the virus. Yerger said homosexual men constitute 73 percent of AIDS patients. But the disease can also be contracted by intravenous drug users (17 percent), hemophiliacs (1 percent), blood transfusions (1 percent, and a mysterious “other” 7 percent).
Yerger said she hopes to present a program this semester to educate the campus community on AIDS facts and myths, and may bring an AIDS victim on campus to speak.
In the meantime, the health center is prepared to help a student or employee who thinks he or she may have AIDS, Yerger said.
“We know the doctors to call,” she said.
But the essential message, Yerger emphasized, will be clear: “We definitely want to state we have sympathy and compassion to the person who has AIDS.”
