With its white paneling, green roof and yard choked by tall grass, it invokes the same sense of isolation as the other houses along a block that overlooks the hulking remains of an abandoned textile factory.
But one Monday a month, a small team of doctors, nurses, therapists and case managers from Health Services Center drive the 79 miles of back roads and state highways from their main office in Hobson City — near Anniston, Ala. — to Lanett, Ala., transforming this plain, empty house into a satellite clinic for HIV patients.
At 9:28 and with the morning temperature hovering around 90 degrees, a white van pulls up to the curb. With a few cars parked and waiting in the shade, the caravan spills out and begins unloading cases of nutritional supplements, arm-loads of medical supplies and patient charts packed in four-wheeled coolers.
With the van empty, staff members scatter to rooms inside the house. Nurses set up in the kitchen, while in other rooms case managers huddle behind small desks and the two mental health therapists set up folding tables and laptops.
“We’re open for business,” says Bobby Malone, sweating in the stagnant air. “Who’s first?”
Malone, a mental health therapist who’s been with the clinic for eight years, slides a sign-up sheet to the center of a table where two women and a man have quietly gathered.
“What’s he so happy about?” asks 42-year-old Willie Anne, slouching against her plastic chair.
“Guess he gets to keep all his blood,” answers 48-year-old Carl, with a burst of laughter.
Intentional ignorance
Since 1992, clinic staff have been coming to Chambers, one of 14 counties it serves, to provide full-scale health care for HIV infected patients as well as administering HIV tests to those worried they might be infected.
“We provide all the things they’d get in a regular medical center here … it just doesn’t look like it,” says Dr. Barbara Hanna, medical director for the clinic. “We do it all very quickly and intensely and then we go away.”
According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, there are 142 known cases of HIV in Chambers County. This may not sound like a high number given the population, which stands at more than 34,000, especially considering Jefferson County alone has 4,465 HIV positive residents, accounting for nearly one-third of all known cases in Alabama. Still, Eric, who is 30, believes he’s being marginalized.
“We’re the people nobody else really cares about,” he says from the back of the waiting room. “Some folks are still so ignorant about what’s out there and what’s really going on. Some people don’t want to believe that this thing is here, that gay people are here, that drugs are here … but they are and they ain’t going nowhere anytime soon.”
