Body Count

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren

As I wrote this in late September, America launched the grim task of finding and identifying the thousands who died during and after Hurricane Katrina. Bodies were scattered from south Louisiana to the Florida panhandle. As of September 23, 11,050 people were still reported missing—a total that dwarfs the count of missing New Yorkers during 9/11. Authorities armed themselves with 25,000 body bags, expecting 10,000 casualties in New Orleans alone. In the ensuing weeks, there will probably be additional deaths from injury, infection, contagious disease, and inadequate medical care.

Among the casualties are surely many hundreds of people with HIV and AIDS. As I started writing this column, the subject was ignored by mainstream media. Many of these hundreds would be poor people of color, as were many in the larger population of hurricane victims. Gay community media and the AIDS press, however, were quick to report.

On 9/2, NAPWA, the National Association of People with AIDS, wrote the Secretary of HHS saying, “We are especially concerned about the...vulnerable position of tens of thousands of our HIV+ brothers and sisters in the impacted area.…We hope that you will make certain that these issues are addressed in a timely, effective manner.”

No doubt NAPWA felt compelled to write this letter because of the government’s criminally inadequate response to the disaster. It ranged from President Bush’s initial lack of attention, to National Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s delay in launching a federal response, to the New Orleans mayor’s failure to commandeer school buses and city transport for evacuating his poorest citizens—those who he surely knew didn’t own cars—before the storm hit.

How many people with HIV and AIDS lived in the path of the hurricane? In 2003, there were 7,592 in Louisiana, 2,875 in Mississippi, 3,940 in Alabama. Estimated total: 14,407 men, women and children, plus a few hundred more in parts of Florida that were hit—say, 15,000 in all. In New Orleans, there were 7,145 HIV cases by 2004. In addition to the city’s large black community, there was a sizeable Latino community—both populations reportedly at high risk of HIV infection.

Other NOLA cases were surely not on record, because they were poor, homeless, and indigent people who were never tested or treated. New Orleans had a large homeless population, which the city made every effort to sweep out of tourists’ sight by arresting indigents on the flimsiest pretext. Some homeless casualties may never be reported missing, or identified if their bodies are found. Possibly some AIDS patients were among those who drowned in some New Orleans hospitals swamped by floodwaters. There may also have been inmates with HIV/AIDS who drowned, locked in cells in the New Orleans county jail when it was abandoned by guards during the flooding.

How many people with HIV and AIDS will perish? We may never know. Indeed, the authorities—who are already doing a lot of desperate image control to make up for their inadequate response—may try to minimize the body count. Major media initially reported 400 bodies found in New Orleans; then suddenly that figure was applied to Louisiana as a whole. On 9/23, the admitted body count for all five states was only 1,079. The figure seemed low considering eyewitness accounts of bodies visible everywhere. One clear hint that government may want to cook the books on the body count: The task of handling bodies was contracted to a mortuary subsidiary of Service Corporation International, a firm with political connections to George W. Bush and a record of implication in illegal dumping of corpses.

Not till September 12 did the Associated Press finally run the first big story on the thousands with HIV and AIDS affected by the hurricane. Mentioned in the news was these refugees’ fear of hostile reactions from the Red Cross or the many faith-based orgs that the government encouraged to participate. “More likely they’re going to try to find an HIV provider,” said Diana Bruce, speaking for the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families.

Scant days after the disaster, any survivors with HIV/AIDS left in New Orleans would have been at lethal risk for their health. Authorities already knew that the festering floodwaters, and the muck where water has already receded, were teeming with many times the safety limit of E. coli and other bacteria, as well as viruses. Said the NAPWA letter: “People with impaired immune systems will be exposed to a large variety of potentially dangerous pathogens in the post-hurricane and post-flood situation. The spread of diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, influenza, and countless other bacterial, fungal and viral infections will skyrocket in the post-hurricane period. This will be true not simply in the dangerous environment of flooded areas, but also in the crowded living facilities where people will be staying for many months.”

Help did come from those who cared. For example, as evacuees arrived in Houston, the city’s Thomas Street Clinic and Montrose Clinic were making healthcare and emergency-type services available. Pfizer announced that it was making HIV drugs and other medications available to refugees. Unfortunately, restoring normal services across the southern tier will be complicated by the fact that many people have lost their medical, insurance, Medicare, and prescription records; more records may have been lost when doctors’ offices, insurance companies, drugstores, and government offices were wiped out.

As the days pass, there are allegations that some authorities were guilty of genocidal neglect, leaving those non-white low-income and homeless populations to their fate so their disappearance would open a lot of property for redevelopment. The government denies this, of course. But there are already reports of a plan to rebuild a new, modern New Orleans above sea level—smaller, more conservative, and business-oriented, with room for minimal tourism and the work force that operates the port, but less room for large numbers of the very poor that once characterized the city, including those living with HIV and AIDS.

As we follow the ongoing struggle to survive Katrina, we’ll be reminded at every turn that people with HIV and AIDS share in the biggest human disaster to befall the United States since the mass unemployment, dust bowl, and forced migrations of the 1930s.

Author of fiction bestsellers and provocative commentary, Patricia Nell Warren has her writings archived at www.patricianellwarren.com. Reach her by e-mail at patriciawarren@aol.com.

October 2005