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New York Minority Legislative Caucus Calls on Pataki To Restore $12M in
AIDS Funding to State Budget
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Apr 03, 2003; source: http://www.kaisernetwork.org
Members of the New York state minority legislative caucus yesterday urged
Gov. George
Pataki (R) to restore the nearly $12 million in funding for AIDS prevention
programs that was
cut from his proposed budget and called for an additional $96 million in
funding for antiretroviral
drugs, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports. Pataki's budget currently allots
$2.6 billion for
AIDS funding in the state, a $288 million increase over the last fiscal year,
Kevin Quinn,
spokesperson for the state Budget Division, said. He added that 80% of the
$2.6 billion is
scheduled to be spent on minorities. The proposed budget cuts $11.9 million
from the New York
State Department of Health AIDS Institute, which provides AIDS prevention
education
programs and legal, medical and housing services for people with HIV/AIDS.
The group urged
the restoration of prevention funds, citing new statistics that show that 90%
of HIV-positive
women in New York are black or Hispanic. "This problem will continue to exist
unless we make it
a priority to target those in need to fight this disease, and women of color
are most in need,"
Assembly member Roger Green (D), chair of the Black, Puerto Rican and
Hispanic Legislative
Caucus, said, adding, "We don't want this problem to be marginalized." More
than one-fourth of
the 56,000 AIDS cases in the state are women, and of those women, 91% are
minorities --
60.7% black and 30.1% Hispanic. In addition, AIDS cases among women in New
York state
account for 25% of the total number of AIDS cases nationwide, according to a
2001-2002
state report. The caucus also asked Pataki to provide in the budget an
additional $96 million for
antiretroviral drugs to be distributed through the state's AIDS Drug
Assistance Program, an
amount the governor had originally proposed through the Health Care Reform Act
reauthorization bill. The program provides antiretroviral drugs and medical
services to 22,000
uninsured people living with AIDS. "No governor has done more to combat AIDS
and HIV than
Gov. Pataki, and even in the face of the largest budget gap in state history,
he has proposed a
budget that has increased AIDS funding by $300 million," Quinn said (Adcox,
AP/Long Island
Newsday, 4/2).
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