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This Week in HIV/AIDS News
Jul 31st, 2009 | no responsesPosted by OIA Staff in Health & Lifestyle, NewsSan Francisco area HIV/AIDS organizations are urging lawmakers to restore millions of dollars in funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs that were cut from the California budget by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) this week, KCBS.com reports. “The governor has removed a substantial amount of our capacity to make sure that people know their HIV status,” Dana Van Gorder of Project Inform said, adding “Services that are keeping people who are already HIV positive healthy will be reduced with a major impact on their health.” A rally is planned to take place next week at the state building in San Francisco to protest the cuts, according to the article (7/30). David Brinkman of the Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs, “says the budget cuts are literally a matter of life and death,” KESQ.com reports. The Desert AIDS Project is hoping that planned fundraising will temporarily offset the cuts to services in the Palm Springs area (Diaz, 7/30).
Columnist Discusses HIV/AIDS Among Blacks In Washington, D.C.
Columnist George Curry on Tuesday in the Hudson Valley Press discussed how HIV/AIDS is impacting the black community, particularly in Washington, D.C. The piece includes comments from Phill Wilson, CEO of the Black AIDS Institute and C. Virginia Fields, president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, who discuss statistics and recommendations to address HIV/AIDS among the black community, including routine HIV testing. Curry writes, “If C. Virginia Fields and other activists get their wish and have [HIV] testing incorporated into routine health testing, that will place a heavier burden on crowded counseling and treatment facilities. But it’s not an insurmountable burden. The question is: Do we have the national will to take on this epidemic?” (7/29).
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Signs Budget That Cuts $52M From HIV/AIDS Programs
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) on Tuesday signed a state budget in which he made $489 million in line-item veto cuts that “will affect child welfare and children’s health care, the elderly, state parks and AIDS treatment and prevention, going beyond the dramatic cuts that were part of the deal Schwarzenegger negotiated with legislative leaders,” the Los Angeles Times reports (Rothfeld/Goldmacher, 7/28). “Services for people with AIDS, which had previously been spared by the Legislature, were reduced by $52 million by Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. That cut will mean no state spending on HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, education or housing services for people with the disease. The state will continue paying for AIDS medications and for tracking the epidemic,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Buchanan, 7/29).Schwarzenegger said, “The legislators have given me a budget with a $156 million negative reserve, so now I had to go in over this weekend and work with my team and make additional cuts.” He added, “That’s ugly, when already we have cut so much, and then we had to make additional cuts” (Steinhauer, New York Times, 7/28). Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said of the cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, “This means there are going to be more people who are HIV-positive who are unwittingly infecting others” (Buchanan, 7/29).
Illinois Attorney General Files Lawsuit Against HIV/AIDS Nonprofit
The Illinois attorney general on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Center for AIDS Prevention for unlawful fundraising and falsifying official documents, ProPublica reports (Weaver, 7/27). Attorney General Lisa Madigan said the state revoked the organization’s registration 20 years ago, but its director, Steve Neely, also known as Morrell Neely, has continued to solicit donations in the state. “The state says the group tried to reregister as a nonprofit using a phony Chicago address, though its boss, … lives in Riverside, Calif.,” Courthouse News Service reports (Freeland, 7/27). “If the suit is successful, Illinois could seize money illegally raised there, bar Neely and others involved with the center from future charitable work in the state, freeze their assets, force them to pay back donations they may have ‘misused and/or wasted’ with interest, and attempt to shut the group down for good by revoking its corporate status,” ProPublica reports (7/27).
Report Looks At HIV Prevalence Among Chicago Gay Men
In Chicago, 17.4 percent of gay men are estimated to be HIV-positive, compared with 1.2 percent of the general male population, according to a new report by the Chicago Public Health Department, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The report is based on data collected from 570 Chicago men through the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system, and found that half of the men with HIV were unaware they were infected (Thomas, 7/25). “Health officials said Friday, information in the report on HIV infection mark the first time Chicago health officials have used blood-testing to determine infection rates among men,” the AP/Chicago Tribune reports. In the past, estimates have relied on interviews with gay and bisexual men, according to Christopher Brown, the Public Health Department assistant commissioner. The report also found that “black men who have sex with other men have double the HIV infection rates of white and Hispanic men,” the AP/Tribune reports (7/24).
“Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report , search the archives, and sign up for email delivery at www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/hiv. The Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2009 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.”
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