Puerto Rico’s AIDS Care in Disarray Over Funds

New York Times
By Eric Eckholm

http://www.nytimes.com

SAN JUAN, P.R. — His emaciated body advertises the damage wreaked by
the AIDS virus. But over the last year, Rolando Warren González, 41,
a former steel band member, has faced an extra challenge to his
survival.

From the shelter where he lives in Loiza in Puerto Rico's
impoverished northeast, Mr. González travels an hour and a half by
bus to reach the government clinic where he receives his "cocktail"
of antiviral drugs.

"But sometimes I go, and they just don't have the medicines," he said.

Six times in the last year, he said, he has suffered two-week periods
with no drugs, undercutting the life-prolonging benefits of modern
therapies against H.I.V., the AIDS virus.

Accounts like his — and worse — are repeated across this tropical
territory of the United States, where hundreds of H.I.V. and AIDS
patients are not receiving vital medical care, say a host of doctors,
community groups and patients.

The disarray in treatment reflects a stew of problems. An
overstretched health care budget is accentuated by rivalries between
the commonwealth and the San Juan city governments, which run
separate AIDS programs.

But federal officials and many local doctors say the main culprit is
the island's poor management of the available money provided for AIDS
care under the Ryan White Act, amounting to $53 million last year.
Clinics have not received drugs on time, and private groups that
assist AIDS patients are often reimbursed six months late or more,
causing some to cut services or even shut down.

In sharp rebukes to the Puerto Rico Health Department and the City of
San Juan, federal officials have put the AIDS grants under unusually
tight review and even threatened to halt some federal money. Because
of disorganization, the officials say, the island has often failed to
spend all its Ryan White aid, losing access to $6.5 million over the
last five years.

Read the rest



----------------------
Jim Pickett
via 'Berry
Running the Chicago Marathon AGAIN in support of HIV/AIDS
services. Please sponsor me here -
http://aidsmarathon.com/participant.asp?runner=CH-1001&EventCode=CH07