Barbara Lee Opposes Cuts to California AIDS Funds
(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) spoke out against proposed new formulas for allocating federal funds for the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS that would result in significant cuts for California and the Bay Area.
“We cannot afford to play musical chairs with federal HIV/AIDS funds,” said Lee. “Taking money away from one state to give it to another and pitting states against each other in a competition for funds is not a solution. We need an increase in funding.”
Under the new formulas in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006, states with a mature HIV/AIDS epidemic that have devoted considerable resources to fighting the disease are slated to lose funds to states with emerging HIV epidemics. Without an increase in new funding, the result will be an immediate and dramatic cut in funding for the state of California, and for Alameda County in particular.
In Alameda County over 6,600 cases of AIDS have been diagnosed since 1980, and nearly 4,000 people have died.
In 1998, Lee led efforts to declare a State of Emergency in Alameda County regarding HIV/AIDS in the African American community, which provided additional funding to combat the disease and inspired the creation of a community wide taskforce to ensure that there was a focused response to this epidemic that targeted the African American community.
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