AIDS service organizations are bracing for the impact of a proposed New York City budget calling for a 3 percent cut in HIV prevention.
For the fiscal year that begins July 1, the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a cut of $428,000 in community-based contracts for HIV prevention, down from the $14.6 million in the current budget.
City officials are downplaying the impact of the cuts and the possibility of an uptick in HIV cases as prevention efforts fall off.
"We have to make cuts across the board. We're preserving the highest quality prevention programs," a health department spokesperson said.
While facing city budget cuts, some AIDS service organizations also report a decline in federal funding and private donations. The New York Community Trust, the largest private donor to New York City nonprofits, experienced a drop in private funding for AIDS from $2.3 million in 2003 to $1.7 million in 2008.
Len McNally, director of the NYC AIDS fund at the trust, attributed the drop to donor fatigue, suggesting that AIDS has come to be considered a chronic problem rather than an epidemic.
Overall, new HIV diagnoses in the city fell 9 percent between 2004 and 2008, from 4,186 to 3,809. Among men who have sex with men (MSM), however, HIV diagnoses rose by 6 percent from 2004, to 1,614 in 2008. In this group, 330 were diagnosed with AIDS within a month of testing positive for HIV. The annual number of these concurrent diagnoses among MSM is up 18 percent from 2004.
Health officials say part of the reason for the rise is greater risk-taking by younger men, who came of age when an HIV diagnosis was no longer considered an automatic death sentence.
"The fear factor is completely missing," New York City Assistant Health Commissioner Monica Sweeney said.
06/08/10
NEW YORK: AIDS Budget Faces Reduction
Source: Wall Street Journal: Suzanne Sataline; Shelly Banjo; Courtesy of the CDC National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention