Without an infectious disease doctor in Rowan County, people living with HIV and AIDS must travel to surrounding cities for medical care.
Since many are poor or unable to drive, the AIDS Task Force has shuttled clients to doctors in Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill for six years.
The Task Force also drives them to church, errands and other appointments.
But as they enter the advanced stages of the disease, some clients become confined to a wheelchair.
And few of the AIDS Task Force drivers had vehicles to accommodate them.
“We realized we needed to purchase a van because our clients were getting sicker,” leader Ben Thayer said. “As our clients grow with us, their health can change rapidly, and we have to meet those needs.”
Medicaid-eligible clients qualify for the Reserve-a-Ride program, Thayer said. But many clients aren’t Medicaid eligible.
So the Task Force applied for a grant from the Kate B. Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem.
And won $12,000.
Gordon and Carolyn Hurley kicked in $1,000, the Task Force picked up the difference and Thayer went to High Point last month to buy a used Dodge van for $14,350.
Equipped with a wheelchair lift, the van can hold two wheelchairs and three other passengers, or more wheelchairs if they remove the backseat.
And to Thayer and others who serve people battling AIDS every day, it is a sight to behold.
“It is wonderful,” said a local social worker who works with clients with HIV/AIDS. “It is much better than I ever expected. ... It is state-of-the-art and very comfortable.
“It can be very frightening for someone who is wheelchair-bound to be transported in a vehicle that is not handicap-accessible. The van can assuage some of that anxiety.”
The driver put 750 miles on the van the first week.
“The van has helped the clients feel a great deal of freedom now to get to the doctor, to get to church, to see family they could not before because of being bound by a wheelchair,” Thayer said. “It makes them feel better, which ultimately helps their health condition.”
The van serves anyone in Rowan County who is infected or affected by HIV or AIDS, Thayer said.
Currently, about 70 clients from several agencies use the van. Ten are wheelchair-bound.
Thayer hopes the van and transportation program will spur a new discussion about recruiting an infectious disease doctor to Rowan County.
“The thought has been that there are not enough sick people here to sustain one,” he said. “I totally disagree. The need is there.”
Thayer would like to see Rowan Regional Medical Center, the Rowan County Health Department or the county commissioners recruit a doctor who could treat AIDS patients.
“Everyone has to recognize that rates of infections are rising,” he said.
Rowan County has 368 HIV-positive people on record, up from 56 in 1995, he said.
And “you can multiply that times two” to get the true figure, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Thayer said.
“We are looking toward the future,” he said. “If we have this now, what is it going to be like in five years? We have to prepare now.”
The Task Force’s transportation program is so successful that the Health Department and groups in Cabarrus County are studying it as a model, Thayer said.
Contact Emily Ford at 704-797-4280 or e-mail eford@salisburypost.com
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