San Francisco has the highest number of HIV-infected residents per capita of any US city. Volberding, a n oncologist, treated the country's first AIDS patient in 1981. A number of patients show the virus is completely cut off in its growth. This is very important. Since San Francisco General started the country's first outpatient AIDS clinic in 1983, the number of patients per month has grown from 300 to 2,700.
Average hospitalization is only three days, compared with three to five months in Ukraine.
Ukraine has no outpatient AIDS clinics, but opening such clinics, along with reduction time spent in the hospital, would help cut costs, said Yuri Dorofeev, MD, chief sanitary physician for Crimea. Southern Ukraine, particularly Odessa and Crimea, has been hard hit by HIV as popularity of a new opium-based drug rises and needs are shared among users. In San Francisco, a community group organizes a needle exchange for drug addicts to discourage sharing of needles. However, because some lawmakers believe that giving needles to drug abusers encourages drug use, federal funds are difficult to obtain, making widespread needle exchange programs difficult in the United States, said Fran Taylor, MD, director of communicable disease control with the San Francisco department of Public Health. The health department provides bleach for cleaning of needles, however.