For Immediate Release
Media Contact:
Justin Burke - 213.201.1525
EMAIL:jburke@apla.org
BUSH ADMINISTRATION RELEASES PRINCIPLES ON RYAN WHITE CARE ACT
Shift Could Leave Heavily Impacted Cities with Fewer HIV/AIDS Funds
Los Angeles, CA, July 27, 2005 –AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) today called on Congress to increase funding for Ryan White CARE Act programs as it moves to implement the president’s principles for CARE Act Reauthorization, released today.
“We’re certainly pleased that the administration has made fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic a top domestic priority,” said APLA Executive Director Craig E. Thompson. “But this same administration has flat funded CARE Act programs for several years, and many programs are now trying to meet increased demand for services with less money than they received in 2003.”
Today, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt released the principles for the reauthorization of the CARE Act, which expires on September 30, 2005. The principles may result in a significant redistribution of money from urban centers such as Los Angeles to more rural areas such as the Southern states.
“With these principles, the devil will be in the details,” Thompson said. “The Southern states are currently reporting infection rates way out of proportion to their percentage of the population. However, 70 percent of all AIDS cases remain in the cities. As we move scarce money around, we need to make sure these states augment federal health care funds, as California has historically done. Otherwise, we’ll have a race for the bottom.”
The president has said he wants CARE Act funding to reach people “with the highest rates of new cases, African-American men and women.”
“What these principles fail to address,” Thompson said, “is the impact of HIV on gay men and Latinos, who account for growing numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS here in Los Angeles and in many cities across the country.”
In the HHS press release today, Secretary Leavitt likened the HIV/AIDS epidemic to global epidemic, citing the need to tailor legislation to those who might not otherwise receive treatment and care. A recent study of men who have sex with men (MSM) in five U.S. cities, published in CDC’s MMWR Weekly, shows HIV prevalence at 46 percent among some black MSM.
“The Secretary is prescient to make such a comparison,” Thompson said. “These rates in urban America are not only tragic but unprecedented. We look forward to working with the president and Congress to implement these principles and reauthorize the CARE Act. However, the domestic epidemic, like the global one, has spun out of control -- not because we’re short on principles, but because we’re short on funding.”
AIDS Project Los Angeles, one of the largest non-profit AIDS service organizations
in the United States, provides bilingual direct services, prevention education
and leadership on HIV/AIDS-related policy and legislation. Founded by four
friends in 1982, APLA is a community-based, volunteer-supported organization
with local, national and global reach. For more information, visit www.apla.org.
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