COMMUNITY GROUPS

New Cleveland health director has new mandate

Members of ACT UP Cleveland met with the city's new health director, Judy Zimomra, on June 14.

Zimomra was the Cleveland commissioner of environment before being asked to fill the position of health director vacated by Daisy Alford earlier this year. Zimomra's background is not in health, but in public administration and management, which will come in very handy since the health department under Alford's leadership was terribly mismanaged, especially in regards to AIDS. We talked a bit about the hepatitis A epidemic in Cleveland. 1992 and 1993

saw ten cases of hepatitis A each. This year we already have 110 cases with two fatalities. It

without council approval. This is key to getting around the many different “moral" hang-ups that we may have encountered at City Hall had we been made to go to council with every request.

The position of Cleveland AIDS "czar" is being pursued by approximately 25 applicants at this time, and we anticipate the position being filled shortly. The prime responsibility of the AIDS czar will be to implement the Citizens Committee on HIV/ AIDS recommendations that came out June

ACT UP

THE AIDS COALITION TO UNLEASH POWER

CLEVELAND

seems to be clustered in certain neighborhoods at this time, with seven cases diagnosed in one family.

But we didn't schedule this meeting to talk about hepatitis. We went to familiarize the new director with ACT UP, what we do, what we've done, and what we would like to see from this new leadership and the renewed commitment from the city to fight. AIDS. She told us that she meets with Cleveland Mayor Mike White once a week and has instructions from the mayor's office to make AIDS a priority.

She also told us that the mayor is adamant about starting a needle exchange program, and implied that White will not back down from this commitment no matter how hot the heat gets. ACT UP wrote a proposal for an exchange program for the city of Cleveland last year, and provided it to the health department and Alford. God only knows what happened to it, so we are sending it again. We also supplied the health department with two studies, from the University of California, San Francisco, and from New Haven, Connecticut, both of which showed that needle exchanges do not increase drug abuse and significantly reduce the spread of blood-borne illnesses. They sounded very committed to getting this program up and running, which was very encouraging.

The block grant funding that was allocated after we chained ourselves to the front of City Hall, was increased at the June 13 Cleveland council meeting. The $75,000 originally allocated for services was increased to $100,000. Along with the $25,000 allocated for housing, this raises the total block grant to $125,000. Better still, council gave the health department the power to contract out up to $100,000 from the grants

7, and to build coalitions and coordinate with the different organizations in town to work together. When we asked when we might expect to start to see things happening, Zimomra said two weeks. Mayor White has said he wants to see the Citizens Committee's recommendations implemented immediately. We didn't expect that. If they say two weeks, in two weeks will be looking to see what's happening.

There is one issue we are concerned about, perhaps prematurely, but we felt we better share it with the community to get input and feedback before it's too late. The health department is recommending mandatory testing for convicted prostitutes. We asked, how far this mandatory testing was going to go? Who would be next in line for mandatory testing? Hospital workers? Pregnant women? Hospital patients? This is dangerous territory, and we will be watching it's development very closely.

All in all we were very pleased with Judy Zimomra. We look forward to working with her office and the new AIDS czar. We feel we have a health director that understands the scope of the epidemic and is willing to take the heat that is bound to come from some of the more controversial proposals. We have an urgency from the mayor's office that we never had before. We will have a person at the health department whose only job will be the AIDS epidemic.

We've come a long way in the city of Cleveland in a very short time. We need to move as quickly as possible to see the Citizens Committee's recommendations carried out because we are years behind other cities our size. ACT UP will be contacting the health director and the AIDS czar on a regular basis. We will be monitoring the process of implementing the program. We'll be reporting back to you, the community, on the progress being made. Remember, ACT UP is watching!

JUNE 24, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

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