Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
MARCH 16, 2000, THURSDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A2
LENGTH: 608 words
HEADLINE:
AIDS Policy Chief Cautions That Epidemic Not Over;
Push to renew law
allotting funds for patient care
BYLINE: David Perlman,
Chronicle Science Editor
BODY:
Warning that
complacency over the AIDS epidemic is mounting in America, President Clinton's
AIDS policy chief called yesterday for swift renewal of the law that provides
millions of dollars to care for needy patients with the deadly infection.
"Far too many policymakers yearn to believe that the worst is behind
us," said Sandra Thurman, director of the White House Office of National AIDS
Policy. "But the sobering truth is that this pandemic is far from over. In fact,
it is just beginning."
Thurman was the major speaker yesterday at the
opening of the 12th National HIV/AIDS Update Conference, an annual meeting in
San Francisco where AIDS advocacy groups, patient care workers, physicians and
researchers gather to share the latest information on progress in therapy and
prevention.
Federal law, known as the Ryan White Care
Act, now provides more than $1.6 billion a year for
medical care for the poorest AIDS patients. Passed 10 years ago and named for an
Indiana boy with hemophilia who campaigned for public understanding of the
disease, the act will expire this year unless it is renewed by Congress within
the next two months.
President Clinton has already sought an additional
$1.6 billion in federal funds for AIDS research and
$700 million to find and apply the most effective prevention
methods in the most hard-hit communities, Thurman said.
One of these is
to end the federal ban on needle exchange, which Thurman agreed has been proved
as a method for curbing the spread of AIDS among injection drug users.
"The blinding ignorance born of racism, sexism and homophobia still
feeds this epidemic," Thurman said. "And we know that as AIDS continues its
march more deeply into poor communities, drug use puts a growing number at risk
and makes the dialogue related to needle exchange all the more important."
As she called on AIDS groups to push harder for the renewal of the Ryan
White Act, Thurman said the nonpartisan measure has been hugely successful.
"It has created a continuum of care that is both compassionate and
cost-effective -- one that saves both lives and money," she said.
Last
year alone, Thurman said, the Ryan White Act helped provide the latest drug
therapy to more than 100,000 poor people living with HIV infections and AIDS,
and has served an estimated 500,000 people with other forms of care -- more than
60 percent of them poor.
The act, she said, has cut the length of costly
hospital care for AIDS patients by at least 30 percent, reduced AIDS mortality
by 70 percent and curbed mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus during
childbirth by 70 percent.
But the epidemic's disastrous effects are
still falling disproportionately on the poor, women, minorities and drug
addicts, Thurman said. The number of deaths from AIDS in the United States, for
example, is declining three times faster for men than for women, and three times
faster among white men and women than for African Americans. And while racial
and ethnic minorities make up one-quarter of the U.S. population, they account
for more than half of all AIDS cases and a growing proportion of new infections
by HIV, the AIDS virus.
"And though we have made progress in reducing
infections and deaths among the larger gay community," Thurman said, "we know
that for young gay men -- and particularly young gay men of color -- the
epidemic is getting worse, not better."
The AIDS Update Conference,
sponsored by the American Foundation for AIDS Research, will continue through
tomorrow with intensive workshops focusing on virtually all the problems
affecting people with AIDS or HIV infection.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2000 
