PRNewswire - November 14, 2003

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation's largest AIDS organization which operates free AIDS treatment clinics in the United States, South Africa, Uganda and Honduras, today praised outgoing Governor Gray Davis for restoring funding to a crucial California AIDS diagnostic assay testing program. In August, state bureaucrats at the Department of Health Services (DHS) announced plans to cut $7 million from the $8 million AIDS Drug Assistance Program's (ADAP) HIV Diagnostic Assay Program -- a stunning 87% cut to medical testing services for people with HIV.

"Cutting medical care to poor people with AIDS is simply not the way to solve California's fiscal woes," said Michael Weinstein, President of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "We thank Governor Davis for his wisdom and compassion in restoring this funding, and urge governor-elect Schwarzenegger to honor Governor Davis' action. This program funds important blood tests that allow doctors to accurately prescribe complex medication combinations. Without these tests, patient lives are threatened and money is wasted prescribing the wrong combinations of very costly medications -- many of which the state pays for via the federally-funded, state-managed AIDS Drug Assistance Program."

The planned cuts came in response to bureaucrats' efforts to reduce California's record $38 billion budget shortfall. According to an August 20 memo by DHS director Diana Bonta to counties and contractors, DHS planned to leave just $1 million in the state program funding "resistance testing." Such testing allows doctors to avoid prescribing medications that will not work on individual strains of the virus.

In an effort to reverse the potentially devastating cuts, AHF officials had written letters to state officials, mobilized support from AIDS organizations throughout the state, and worked with Daniel Zingale and Joy Higa in the Governor's office to restore the funding. On Monday, AHF received word that Governor Davis had directed the DHS to restore the funding.

In October, shortly after the 87% cut was announced, a group of Southern California AIDS leaders including Howard Aaron Aronow, M.D., Co-Investigator, Research Neurologist, National Neurological AIDS Bank, Dept. of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles; John Brown, Executive Director, Desert AIDS Project, Palm Springs; Oscar De La O, Executive Director Bienestar Human Services, Los Angeles; Maryann Fraser, Executive Vice President PROTOTYPES, Centers for Innovation in Health, Mental health, and Social Services, Culver City; Marc Haupert, Executive Director, Los Angeles Shanti Foundation, Los Angeles; The Inland Empire HIV Planning Council; Howard Jacobs, Person Living with HIV/AIDS, West Hollywood; Geoff Kors, Executive Director, Equality California; Davyd G. McCoy, M.A., Founder/Executive Director, Hands United Together, HUT San Fernando Valley NAACP Executive Committee, Health Chair, Los Angeles; Ty Ramsower, Interim Executive Director, Foothill AIDS Project, Claremont/San Bernardino; Gary Vrooman, President, Being Alive, South Bay, Redondo Beach; Doris Wahl, Executive Director, Whittier Rio Hondo AIDS Project, Whittier; and Michael Weinstein, President, AIDS Healthcare Foundation Los Angeles; wrote to the Governor to, "express our dismay and opposition to state plans to cut $7 million in funding from the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) diagnostic assay program," which pays for 'resistance testing' and which is "a crucial part of the standard of care for HIV/AIDS treatment: HIV cannot be treated adequately without it." The Southern California AIDS leaders then urged the Governor to, "fully fund this critical program."

In an October 1st letter to Michael Montgomery, Chief of California's State Office of AIDS, Charles Henry, the Director of Los Angeles County's Office of AIDS Programs & Policy (OAPP), also warned, "The absence of State funding for this critical program has the effect of shifting the burden to local health jurisdictions, and is likely to create substantially different systems of care and levels of service among the local health jurisdictions in California."

John Conley, President of the California Conference of Local AIDS Directors (CCLAD), also wrote to Montgomery about the proposed cuts stating, "On behalf of CCLAD, I urge you to keep diagnostic assay services intact in order to assure a consistent standard of care throughout California. HDAP (HIV Diagnostic Assay Program) is critically important to ensure that ADAP (AIDS Drug Assistance Program) is utilized in the most efficient and effective way."

AIDS Healthcare Foundation also ran advocacy ads in some of the larger alternative and gay newsmagazines in the state urging readers and concerned Californians to call the Governor's office to protest the almost 90% cut from the HIV diagnostic assay program.

"It is difficult to imagine a more shortsighted way to try and save money," said AHF's Weinstein. "We thank Governor Davis for his commitment to both fiscal responsibility and to ensuring that people with AIDS continue to get the quality medical care they need to live."

SOURCE AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)

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