Obama’s Domestic AIDS Proposal Disappoints
$45M for National HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign—Obama’s First Official Action on AIDS—Falls Far Short of Need; Stepped-up HIV Testing, Linkage to Treatment Will Help Break Chain of Infection
US’ Largest AIDS Group Renews Call on Government to Spend $200M for 10 Million HIV Tests
April 7, 2009
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest non-profit HIV/AIDS organization in the US which currently provides medical care and services to more than 100,000 individuals in 21 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia, expressed its deep disappointment today regarding President Obama’s proposal to spend $45 million—over the next five years—only $9 million per year—on a national communications campaign on HIV/AIDS here in the United States. The proposal—Obama’s first official action on AIDS—falls far short of the need to adequately address the growing domestic epidemic and appears to be window dressing of a potentially politically-charged issue. The White House will partner with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the campaign, the first federally funded national domestic HIV/AIDS campaign in almost twenty years according to White House officials.
“There are approximately 1.2 million people in the US living with HIV/AIDS today. More than 300,000 of these individuals have never had an HIV test and therefore do not know their HIV status. A $45 million communications plan no matter how well intended will do little to help identify those 300,000 infected individuals who may unknowingly be infecting others,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “In November, we issued a statement reminding President-elect Obama that AIDS remains a significant and growing crisis in America, and we urged him to prioritize this public health crisis by taking simple, straightforward steps to address the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic upon taking office in January. If this proposal is any indication of how President Obama and his Administration intend to address the AIDS epidemic domestically or globally, we are deeply disappointed.”
In September 2006, the CDC recommended that diagnostic HIV testing and opt-out HIV screening become a part of routine clinical care in all healthcare settings (emergency units, community clinics, etc.) for all those ages 13 to 64. To date, this CDC guideline has not been widely-implemented due to bureaucratic delays and conflict as to who actually absorbs the costs of such public health testing—the government or private insurance companies.
In August 2008, the CDC released stark new data showing an alarming 40% increase in HIV infections in the US annually (56,000 new cases each year up from a previous estimate of 40,000 cases annually). Those numbers are an indictment of how profoundly US and CDC HIV prevention efforts have failed over the years.
“According to an Institute of Medicine study, the lifetime cost of one HIV-infected individual’s treatment and care is estimated to be $600,000. The cost of an HIV test can be under $20. Without an accurate picture of the epidemic, which has been vastly underestimated for the past ten years, we have missed countless opportunities to intervene with effective public health strategies,” added AHF’s Weinstein. “AIDS Healthcare Foundation believes that President Obama, HHS and the CDC should appropriate $200 million to test ten million people for HIV over the next three years. Massive scale-up of HIV testing is the only way to bring down the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in America. Identifying all those who are infected and linking them to treatment is the only way to break the chain of new infections and begin to address the nation’s runaway epidemic.”
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About AHF
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is the nation’s largest non-profit HIV/AIDS healthcare provider. AHF currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 100,000 individuals in 21 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia. Additional information is available at www.aidshealth.org
