Women with AIDS

Women are a rapidly growing percentage of this nation’s population of persons with AIDS (PWAs). This article presents not only an excellent clinical review of system specific symptomatic issues and their corresponding interventions but also the special challenges faced by the women with AIDS. A poignant case study is utilized to present this information that is so essential to all home health care providers. T HIS ARTICLE is about women with / acquired immunodeficiency syn-drome (AIDS) who are living at home. It is also about their children, their partners, and their parents. A case study describing the final months of one of several unforget-table women with AIDS is followed by a discussion of the clinical problems and issues that differentiate women with AIDS from their male counterparts with the dis-ease. The author’s focus is both clinical and policy oriented. In view of the escalat-ing health care demands and increasingly scarce fiscal resources, outcomes must be evaluated with a critical eye on health policy planning. I am a clinician in a large urban home care agency where an increasing part of the AIDS caseload is being reflected by female patients. Most are women of color, because the agency is in an inner city, low-income area inhabited by many Hispanics, Cape Verdeans, and Haitians. I speak from the perspective of an inner-city home care nurse who is neither a social worker nor a psychologist. A diverse array of clinical problems and policy-driven issues come to the fore when clini-cians care for a woman with AIDS who chooses to die at home