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Calif. Budget Cuts Threaten AIDS Patient Funding

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May 28, 2009 5:33 pm US/Pacific

Calif. Budget Cuts Threaten AIDS Patient Funding

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― The Bay Area is still ground zero in the AIDS epidemic, and now many Californians are set to lose the help that is literally keeping them alive.
Cuts in the governor's budget proposal would eliminate millions of dollars for aids, affecting everything from testing and counseling to the drugs that AIDS patients get.

Ken Hornby of San Francisco is one of 35,000 low-income Californians whose AIDS drugs are subsidized by the state. But it's funding that the Governor's budget eliminates. He takes 20 pills-a-day, and any interruption in taking his pills could see a strengthening of the virus.

Hornby asked, "If they take this away, I've been HIV for 30 years this June, if they take this away, how am I going to live?"

Statewide, total AIDS cuts would top $80 million, affecting every aspect of treatment for the disease.

"Funding for all aids programs up and down the state will be cut, pretty much eliminated, and that's got all of us very worried, because its quite serious," said Dr. Judy Auerbach of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

And AIDS is not going away. There are still over 800 new infections every year just in San Francisco alone. If the state cuts too deeply, it could jeopardizing matching funds from the federal government.

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