Epidemic Highlights Disparities
It was 1982 when Dr. Jean Malecki examined a dying 9-month-old baby and made the first pediatric AIDS diagnosis in Palm Beach County.
The parents, who had arrived recently from the Caribbean, were sick, too.
"Within six months, the child had died," Malecki said. "The whole family got wiped out by the disease."
Malecki states this flatly because in the past 25 years, the Palm Beach County health director says, she has seen that flinching from the truth accomplishes nothing.