Manchester has the second largest HIV positive population in the country.

The George House Trust, a voluntary organisation which cares for people with HIV and Aids, says it gets most of its funding from Manchester Health Authority and Salford and Trafford Health Authority.

It was told on Monday that Salford will maintain its funding for the next year.

However, it says it has had no contact with Manchester which provides the bulk of its funding.

The trust employs six staff and none currently has an employment contract because the organisation cannot guarantee that it will get the funding it needs to continue.

'Wing and prayer'

Last year, Manchester provided £160,000, compared to about £45,000 from Salford.

Combination therapy is costly but effective

"We are maintaining things on a wing and a prayer," said John Nicolson, director of the trust.

"We are one and a half months into the financial year. It is outrageous and cannot keep going on."

He accused the health authority of using HIV patients as pawns in a struggle to win more funding from central government by first threatening that their drugs would be rationed and then saying it might have to cut support services.

"The two are complementary," said Mr Nicolson. "We support patients to take drugs and give them information and psychological support.

"We are relatively cost effective. Without us, millions would be wasted on drugs."

The trust has received a letter from the Department of Health saying that health authorities had had their allocations and would be in touch shortly.

Manchester Health Authority says it is still unclear about its allocation for this year.

A spokesman said part of the reason was that the government had tried to correct the historical bias towards London Aids patients.

He said London authorities have been getting £20,000 per HIV positive person, compared with £9,000 per person in other regions.

This is because there have traditionally been many more patients in London.

Extra money

The government has directed some extra money to the regions this year to make up for the bias, but Manchester says it has still not sorted out how much of this it will get.

It does not believe it will be enough to make up for an estimated £1.5m deficit in this year's Aids budget, due in part to the cost of funding drug treatment for patients.

Combination drug therapy has been found to virtually eliminate HIV from patients' blood, although it is not a cure.

The health authority says its priority is drug therapy rather than support services.

It is trying to negotiate with the local council to get it to fund some aspects of social care for Aids patients.

The spokesman said it did not anticipate a decision on funding until July.

In the meantime, it would be meeting HIV agencies soon and would tell them to continue as normal until then and possibly until September.

The George House Trust says what it and its patients need is long-term security.

"This is short-termism at its worst," said John Nicolson.

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