Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

9-13

9-14

9-15

which include education on non-discrimination.

Religious leaders should take an active role in the anti-discrimination education effort with members of their parish or congregation. In addition, religious institutions should develop outreach programs for individuals in their community with HIV infection and should involve the congregation or parish members in volunteer activities,

Employers should develop an HIV education program for all employees. Education programs to combat discrimination should emphasize two goals: information about transmission to prevent the further spread of HIV infection and education about legal issues-such as how to ensure confidentiality and prevent discrimination. This approach should be used in all workplace settings.

Employers should have each department or office review and revise policies and procedures in light of medical and legal information related to HIV infection, and, where applicable, interact with the community to further public education about HIV infection. This last step may be most applicable to the public sector.

HIV and the Schools

The Commission has heard testimony about the experiences, both good and bad, of a number of HIV-infected schoolchildren. Important lessons can be learned from those model communities which have policies in place regarding HIV infection in advance of the first case, and have been able to accept the HIV. infected individual in their schools without fear and discrimination. In some school districts, a well-coordinated system of educational programs has produced an enhanced sense of community pride and satisfaction from having worked together to fashion an enlightened, rational policy on HIV infection for the schools. The Commission has been impressed with the courage and compassion which school and public health officials have displayed in planning and preparing for a positive outcome. A number of common principles emerge from the experiences of these model communities. The recommendations in this section should be implemented in conjunction with the schoolbased education recommendations in the education chapter of this report.

[blocks in formation]

9-23

Educational associations should disseminate information to their members on the policies and procedures used by those communities which have accepted an HIV-infected individual in their schools without fear and discrimination.

HIV and Health Care Settings

The Commission has heard testimony that some hospitals and some health care workers in hospitals have been unwilling to care for HIVinfected persons or have provided inappropriate care because of fear. Steps must be taken to eradicate this fear because these institutions are critical sources of care and are leaders in community attitudes.

Over the next five to 10 years, even more community-based health care facilities, such as group homes, nursing homes, hospices, and mental health facilities, will be needed in many communities to care for patients with HIV infection. Long-range planning for these facilities must be undertaken now in order to avoid fearful and discriminatory reactions from the community.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Specifically, the Commission recommends:

9-24

9-25

9-26

Hospitals and providers of health care to HIV-infected patients should establish a mandatory education program for all hospital employees, including an antidiscrimination component and professional, confidential counseling for all employees. Health care workers need to be reminded about the social context of HIV infection and the need for confidenuality and protection of private medical information.

Health care providers dealing with patients with HIV should make available a patient care advocate, if one does not yet exist, to regularly contact individuals with HIV, so that patients could confidentially report treatment problems. Health care professionals who have repeated, substantiated complaints made against them, and who resist education, should be formally reprimanded and placed on probation. In general, the Commission feels that remedies such as this should be short-term in nature and could gradually be phased out.

State and local governments and health care providers should develop long. range plans now to anticipate the need for community-based health care facilities, and should develop a strategy to

[blocks in formation]

Senator WEICKER. Thank you very much. Before I proceed to questions with Admiral Watkins, those that are in wheelchairs, I would like to get as many as possible up here. This is a tremendous statement by the entire community. I think we have the entire community right in this hearing room. [Applause.]

If you want to just come forward, that will enable more that are in the back to be in a comfortable position, as comfortable as possible during such as this. I think it is terrific that you are all here.

Admiral Watkins, one question that I have is that the words that I hear all over the place are well, we like that Presidential Commission report, but we do not like the antidiscrimination aspect of it. We can take the report, but we do not want that antidiscrimination aspect of it. Have you heard this, also?

Mr. WATKINS. Yes, I have, Senator Weicker.

Senator WEICKER. That is what we are contending with here. That is why it is such a privilege to have you here, because it is not just a question of discrimination against AIDS, which is the most recent discrimination, but the decades old discrimination that so many have suffered with here in this room.

I could not help but think, with all the concern for the ritual of the Pledge of Allegiance, how many people think about those last words, indivisible with liberty and justice for all? And justice for all. That is what the Americans with Disabilities Act is all about, justice for all.

So instead of being a ritual, let us make it a reality. [Applause.] Congressman Owens.

Mr. OWENS. I have no questions, Admiral, but since you first came to my office for a brief introductory session, I have been quite pleased with the way you have moved in this city and the Nation as a whole, to establish a certain kind of calm and a return to reason on this whole issue. I want to congratulate you on a magnificent job that you have done.

We recently passed legislation related to AIDS on the House level. It may have some shortcomings, but I think that the positive, upbeat nature of that legislation is due primarily to the fact that you established an environment in which we could work; an environment where anybody who was not a reasonable person was isolated. In several votes that we took, we isolated those unreasonable and hysterical people.

I think you are to be congratulated for helping to establish that atmosphere which made possible the passing of the current legislation.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you, Congressman Owens.

Senator WEICKER. Thank you, Congressman. Congressman Jeffords.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Admiral, it is good to see you again. I deeply appreciate the earlier conversation we had on the dynamics of the work force, which put me a little ahead of the curve in understanding, and I appreciate that, and your dedication to public service after work as a tremendous member of our naval establishment.

Congressman Waxman introduced a bill earlier this year, and I joined him on that, on counseling and testing and discrimination. I just want to alert everyone that all we could get out was counseling and testing. The problems of discrimination, the inability to ar

ticulate anything which we could get past the House on the floor debate, many of these things indicate that that is going to be the most serious problem that we face when we get to ADA, is how we can work in to ensure the rights of those that have AIDS.

I appreciate very much your very excellent testimony on that. I want to alert my colleagues that it is going to be no easy task and hopefully we will find a rational way to deal with this. Your statements are going to be so helpful in that regard, and I thank you for that.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you, Mr. Jeffords.

Senator WEICKER. There will be further questions for response to the record, more particularly those of the Chairman, Senator Harkin, who I might add, without his help, without his hard driving on this issue, we would not be here today. He is a magnificent chairman.

He has specific questions for you, Admiral Watkins, which I would appreciate your responding for the record.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator WEICKER. Thank you very, very much for all you have done for the Nation. Thank you. [Applause.]

Now we have a panel of witnesses, Mary Linden from Morton Grove, IL; Dan Piper from Ankeny, IA, accompanied by his mother, Sylvia; Jade Calegory from Corona Del Mar, CA; and Lakisha Griffin, from Talladega, AL.

I think that we will go in order of how I called the witnesses. Please be relaxed. You are among friends, both in front and behind you. I think we want, and America wants, to hear your story. Please proceed. Mary, you are the first witness.

STATEMENTS OF MARY LINDEN, MORTON GROVE, IL; DAN PIPER, ANKENY, IA, ACCOMPANIED BY SYLVIA PIPER, ANKENY, IA; JADE CALEGORY, CORONA DEL MAR, CA; AND LAKISHA GRIF. FIN, ALABAMA SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND, TALLADEGA, AL

Ms. LINDEN. I am deeply honored to be asked to speak before the committee. The Americans with Disabilities Act is the greatest act ever passed in the 20th century, I believe, sir.

You see before you a woman who, until 1987, did not even believe that she could help with anything or even change her own outlook. My father had always chosen my path, before his death in 1964. There was no accessible housing for him to use for me, so he put both my mother and myself in a retirement home. Upon her death, I moved to their adjacent nursing home. His access still provides for my care.

His words, "As long as I am paying for your keep, you take my orders" still go through my mind every time new challenges offer themselves.

At 7 years of age, I entered the Jesse Spalding School for the Crippled, a venerable institution of the Chicago school system, a segregated institution of the Chicago school system which is still in operation today. I was there and they never even taught me to write. I learned to print after, I taught myself to print after I finished high school, with a class rank of 9 out of a class of 45, in 1951.

No career plans or educational plans were made for me because the school and my parents thought I was too disabled to compete. I have been after my education for 20 years. I got most of it after transportation became accessible, after a fashion that is. It is not. I have got 61 hours of credit.

But we cannot get from Morton Grove to Northeastern University because the two transportation organizations will not unite, so discrimination still exists. I want my 4 year degree so that I can go and have Executive Director Jim DeJong of the Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities [CCDI] in Illinois, for the most precious thing in the world, a paying job.

I beg of you to pass this act, so that other children will not have to go through what I went through, will not be stared at, will not be limited as to how many times they can see things. It will not be once every 6 months that we get to go shopping. If we pass it, we can go stare at the glass windows any time we want to.

The youngsters here will have much more chance than I did, but they should have a chance to work and to contribute as much as they can.

I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Linden follows:]

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »