AIDS TREATMENT UPDATE, Issue 42, June 1996
Will Anderson

Most of NAM's income comes from subscriptions to its publications. This includes the fees from the professionals who receive AIDS Treatment Update, and the income from the rest of our publications including the National AIDS Manual.

However almost all of our work which is specifically for people living with HIV and AIDS is provided free.

This includes AIDS Treatment Update and the HIV factsheets; Living with HIV & AIDS; and the London information forums and national programme of treatment workshops which we run for the Treatments Action Taskforce. The exception is the HIV & AIDS Treatments Directory û though there is a special price for people living with HIV which we have reduced to £9.95 (considerably less than cost).

The total cost of all our free services is over £130,000. AIDS Treatment Update is the biggest cost, and as we get new subscribers every day the cost rises all the time. We now have almost 4,000 free subscribers (as well as about 600 paying subscribers).

There are three main sources of funding for this work: health authorities (43% of the total), trusts (23%) and pharmaceutical companies (34%).

If you are a subscriber living with (or affected by) HIV in London it is very likely that your local health authority is paying for your free subscription. The only London authorities which make no contribution are Brent & Harrow and Redbridge & Waltham Forest.

Our attempts to get support from local health authorities outside London have not been successful in the past. We hope that this will change in years to come as more district authorities recognise the importance of promoting treatments education for people living with HIV. However in 1996 the Department of Health has agreed to meet a substantial part of the costs of providing AIDS Treatment Update free nationally.

Of the trusts, CRUSAID is once again supporting our treatments education in 1996 and we are also hoping for some support from the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Mercury Phoenix Trust (not confirmed). Living with HIV & AIDS was funded by a special trust in memory of Simon Mansfield and by the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Our policy on receiving funding from pharmaceutical companies is very straightforward: they must recognise the importance of NAM's role as an independent information provider and must in no way seek to compromise this independence. Basically, there are never any strings attached.

Most pharmaceutical companies now respect the role of the voluntary sector and try to make sure they consult with community organisations. Of course they don't always like it when we say critical things about their products, but they know better than to try and stop us!

NAM seeks to be as rigorous as possible in maintaining its independence. In particular, when we send people to conferences we always pay for them ourselves rather than accepting plane tickets from pharmaceutical companies. As far as possible, we ask these companies to support all our work (leaving us to decide how best to pursue it) rather than accepting funding for very specific activities.

In 1996 we have received funding from Agouron, Ares Serono, Glaxo Wellcome, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Pharmacia Upjohn and Roche Products.

Although finding the money for all this work is a time-consuming and difficult task, NAM is committed to continuing the development of its work for people living with HIV.

Please help us to make AIDS Treatment Update as widely known as possible. If you know of anyone living with or directly affected by HIV, tell them all they need to do is phone us up to be put on the strictly confidential mailing list.

If on the other hand you are reading this for professional reasons, please make sure you are paying for it!

9606
ATU4204

Copyright © 1996 - AIDS Treatment Update. Permission granted for noncommercial reproduction, provided that our address and phone number are included if more than short quotations are used. Subscription lists are kept confidential. NAM Publications 16a Clapham Common Southside, London, England SW4 7AB; TEL: 01-71-627-3200 (from outside the UK: +44-171-627-3200); FAX: 01-71-627-3101 (from outside the UK: +44=171-627-3101)  info@nam.org.uk  http://www.nam.org.uk