Health Workers Bring AIDS Message Home to Minorities : Disease: Migrants are told how to avoid the deadly virus during talks in churches, classrooms, hangouts and farms.

Along the back streets of the cities and in the fields of the county’s farmlands, Maria Luisa Jimenez sets up her makeshift lectern and delivers a message some do not want to hear.

The face of AIDS is changing, she recently told a group of migrant workers. The deadly disease is claiming more minorities.

“We need to take care of ourselves,” Jimenez said. “It’s growing in our group of people--the Hispanic people--and the black people.”

At a time when the number of minority people infected with acquired immune deficiency syndrome continues to increase, health workers such as Jimenez are taking their message to Ventura County’s minority communities.

As of November, 1990, 44% of all AIDS cases reported that year in Los Angeles County were Latino, black or Asian-American, up from 31% five years ago, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Los Angeles County health officials say that while the AIDS epidemic among white, gay males seems to be reaching a plateau, the impact of the virus on minorities has yet to reach a peak.

And over the next decade, AIDS experts predict that the number of new cases in South and Central America will swell dramatically.

In Ventura County, minorities accounted for 24% of the 161 AIDS cases reported during 1990. Although the percentage of minority people with AIDS has stayed about the same over the past five years, health workers say they don’t want to wait until the upward trend in Los Angeles County reaches Ventura County.

Jimenez, a health worker at Clinicas del Camino Real, said she sometimes gives a dozen AIDS lectures a week--mostly targeting immigrants. She goes to churches and classrooms, hangouts and farms.

On a recent sun-drenched Sunday afternoon, Jimenez paid a visit to a migrant camp in Fillmore. About 50 men, most from Mexico, gathered in the cafeteria, anxious for information.

Between 80% and 90% said they didn’t know enough about AIDS to answer a few basic questions about the virus, such as how it is transmitted and whether it is curable. Jimenez’s lecture--entirely in Spanish--started out slow and simple.

She provided information about the immune system and details about how the virus breaks down the body’s defenses.

Next she gave a short lecture on the basics of sex--leaving some members of the group chuckling nervously. Jimenez followed up with information on the ways AIDS is transmitted.

She closed the lecture with a demonstration on how to use a condom.

“I don’t like to use condoms,” one man said. “It’s not natural.”

“Maybe not,” Jimenez said. “But it will keep you alive.”

Afterward, she was swamped with questions.

“Are you sure we can’t get it from a kiss?” asked one man.

“What about a prostitute?” asked another.

“No, you can’t get it from a kiss,” Jimenez advised. “And you should try to stay away from prostitutes.”

She knows that what she has to say is sometimes difficult to take.

“There’s a lot of denial,” Jimenez said. “A lot of this is a reality they don’t want to hear. But it is hitting them slowly.”

Before the men left, Jimenez gave them brochures and posters describing the deadly virus. She told them to take the information home with them and to tell their family and friends.

“I heard about AIDS before, but I didn’t take it seriously,” said Guillermo Ambriz, 20, a farm worker. “But now this has made me think. I don’t want to die young.”

Nevertheless, Jimenez questions how much impact her lectures will have on the behavior of the members of her audience.

In three months she plans to check back with the farm workers to see how they are doing.

Since 1988, Clinicas del Camino Real--a medical clinic in Saticoy--has led the county’s minority AIDS education efforts.

The clinic receives about $61,000 from the federal government. The money is used to pay the salaries of two people and purchase support materials, such as the brochures and condoms.

Considering that the number of new immigrants moving to Ventura County is rapidly increasing, Petra Luna, the coordinator of Clinicas’ AIDS education project, said she would like to expand the program.

“I’d like to provide more presentations,” Luna said. And, she added, it angers her that not enough information on AIDS is available in Spanish.

“The Spanish speakers are the ones who are left behind,” she said.

Still, county officials have praised the Clinicas’ efforts. It is one of the few AIDS outreach programs to Latinos in the county.

“Their message is culturally sensitive,” said Martina Rippey, the county’s AIDS surveillance coordinator. “It’s in the vernacular they understand.”

Jimenez said sometimes members of her audience are surprised at her openness when talking about sex and AIDS.

“They say, ‘No one has ever talked like this to me before,’ ” Jimenez said. “In our culture, these things are not talked about.”

But Jimenez tells her audiences to forget their old prejudices and misinformation about sex and AIDS--especially the hazardous belief that the deadly virus only affects white, homosexual men.

“It’s not a racial issue, it’s a behavior issue,” said Larry Dodds, the medical director for the county Public Health Services. “AIDS is an equal opportunity disease. It does not pay attention to ethnicity.”