Thread: Focusing HIV prevention efforts toward migrant workers

S.J. focusing its HIV prevention efforts toward county's migrant workers



By Jennifer Torres
Record Staff Writer
March 29, 2008 6:00 AM

The migrant workers who have returned this season to often-isolated camps and barracks scattered over San Joaquin County farmland are at high risk of contracting and carrying HIV as they move across state and national lines, say public health advocates who face a range of obstacles in their work to prevent the virus's spread.

Outside one barracks this week, two workers leaned over a wire laundry line as Rudy Ceja, an HIV educator with the San Joaquin AIDS Foundation, told them that millions of people have the virus and don't know it.

In the county Public Health Services van parked behind him, outreach workers were waiting to administer free HIV tests. No blood would be drawn, Ceja promised - the test is oral - but the men would be asked about their sexual history, if they had ever had sex with another man, for example.

They laughed uncomfortably.

"These things happen," Ceja said. Or, he said, a prostitute might have visited the camp. "She's not going to tell you she's positive."

California has been the destination of the largest share of undocumented immigrants to the United States. Health officials on both sides of the border have linked that migration to the spread of HIV and AIDS in Mexico, especially within the country's rural villages.

A number of factors make Mexican migrants vulnerable to infection. At the same time, migrants have limited access to health care and education.

A 2007 report from the Office of the Mexican Secretary of Health notes that migrants who leave Mexico for the United States are typically poor and poorly educated. Once here, they encounter relaxed social norms. They are apart from their families - and the company of women - for long stretches of time, and many engage in risky sexual behavior.

In 2001, the University of California-led California HIV/AIDS Research Program surveyed of hundreds of Mexicans from Puebla and Morelos, two states with high migration numbers.

The results, published in the November 2004 issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, found that immigrants to the United States had more sexual partners than those who did not leave Mexico. They also were more likely to have had intercourse with sex workers.

Meanwhile, they are unlikely to seek or have access to medical attention, and the subject of sexually transmitted disease remains taboo.

It's often difficult to persuade migrant workers to take an HIV test, said Richard Gonzales, a community health outreach worker for the county.

At the farm barracks this week, he offered burritos to men who agreed to be tested and promised $5 gift certificates to Rancho San Miguel market to those who returned to pick up their test results at a health fair in April.

"We can't force anyone," he said.

Mexico's first AIDS case was documented in 1983, and for many years after, most of the country's AIDS cases involved people who had spent time living in the United States, according to the Mexican health department.

That figure has since dropped, but immigrants - and their families in Mexico - remain at risk. According to U.N. figures, the prevalence of AIDS in the United States is .6 percent among adults, double what it is in Mexico. Migrants are more likely to be exposed to the disease than if they had remained in their home country.

Gonzales said county public health workers have made at least three trips this year to administer HIV tests to migrant laborers.

Other, broader programs have been developed.

For example, Mexico's Vete Sano, Regresa Sano - Go Healthy, Return Healthy - seeks to educate immigrants on health risks and preventative measures.

The country also is involved in the binational California-Mexico AIDS Initiative, a project that has supported research on migrant health as well as intervention efforts.

Celso Martinez, from Oaxaca, said he first came to California for work 14 years ago. He agreed this week to take an HIV test in the Public Health Services van.

"Part of you doesn't want to know," the 31-year-old said afterward. "But I know that it's important to know."

Contact reporter Jennifer Torres at (209) 546-8252 or jtorres@recordnet.com.


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"Mexico's first AIDS case was documented in 1983, and for many years after, most of the country's AIDS cases involved people who had spent time living in the United States, according to the Mexican health department. "

That's funny, what self respecting mexican hasn't spent time as an ILLEGAL in the United States!