HIV/AIDS Bush Compassion Deficit

Nearly 2,000 Americans Living with HIV/AIDS are on ADAP Waiting Lists for Life-Saving Medicines. SAVE ADAP Brings Americans Living with HIV/AIDS to Crawford to Discuss the ADAP Crisis and Consequences.

Despite his claims of compassionate conservatism, President Bush has seemed to have dropped the first part of his political affiliation, as indicated by his willfully turning a blind eye on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United States. Since President Bush took office in 2000, the increase in federal funding under the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), one of the
programs that provides life saving medications to Americans living with HIV/AIDS who are uninsured or underinsured, has drastically decreased despite the fact that the number of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses have continually grown.

This has created a situation in which nearly 2,000 Americans living with HIV/AIDS, in nine states, have been wait-listed by their government for the AIDS drugs that mean the difference between life and death. The current federal budget for the fiscal year 2006 will only expand this crisis. Congress is only providing an increase of $10 million to ADAP even though an increase of
$303 million is needed in order to provide AIDS medication to those on ADAP and to clear the waiting lists.

In response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, SAVE ADAP has organized a special SAVE ADAP summit, a Town Hall meeting to discuss the HIV/AIDS funding crisis, which will take place on August 25, 2005 in Crawford, Texas. Americans with HIV/AIDS will be meeting to bring their first hand experiences with ADAP to the table and to demand that the Bush Administration provide the full funding that ADAP needs to remain providing treatment to all HIV/AIDS patients in need.

"President Bush must take the leadership that his position implies to help his fellow Americans living with HIV/AIDS," remarked Jeff Bloom, an ADAP patient for seven years and a co-organizer of the SAVE ADAP Summit. "Congress has made it perfectly clear that they need directions from the pesident to provide more funding for ADAP, yet the pesident has continued to remain silent."

The Save ADAP Committee is a Working Group of the AIDS Treatment Activist Coalition (ATAC), a national coaslition of AIDS treatment activists and policy advocates. Working in conjuntion with ADAP clients and providers on the grassrooots level, Save ADAP aims to ensure adequate funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program.
For more information about save ADAP go to www.atac-usa.org/adap.