It could be the unkindest cut of all for those caught in the vicious cycle of sickness-induced poor appetite, physical weakness, isolation and meager means.
Reeling from a reallocation of federal Ryan White Treatment Modernization Act funds allotted the Baltimore area, Moveable Feast, a Baltimore nonprofit that prepares and delivers meals and groceries to area homeless and some 650 homebound sick, has cut delivery to 98 HIV/AIDS Baltimore City patients due to a diversion of $145,000 to other organizations.
“They took away half of our Ryan White funding for people in Baltimore City,” Moveable Feast Executive Director Vic Basile said of the March 1 development, which he said was imposed by the volunteer Greater Baltimore HIV Planning Council. “So we?re scrambling to try to find the money to [reinstate the recipients].”
Only about 50 of the organization?s total recipients ? mostly women with breast cancer ? are non-HIV/AIDS patients, Basile said.
“The service is great,” said former client Harriet Johnson, a mother of seven who now works for Moveable Feast. “It helped me mentally and physically. I was too weak to get enough food for me and my children … and they gave us what we needed.”
Basile noted that the $2.2 million per year nonprofit supports its non-HIV/AIDS clients with non-Ryan White funds, obtained from donations and events such as its fifth-annual “Ride for the Feast” charity bike ride, May 19 and 20.
“The council only determines how much a service category gets, not what individual providers get,” countered Greater Baltimore HIV Planning Council Chairman Lennie Green, who said that other organizations actually determine provider allocations and assured him that no HIV/AIDS patients would be affected by a cut.
“The cut came about as a result of law.”
Green explained that the reauthorized law stipulates that act funds must go only to people who are HIV-positive, and that this requirement drove a council shift in service category funds.
Basile, however, is unconsoled, and is appealing the council?s decision.
“We think they based their decision on inaccurate information,” he said, adding that further cutbacks could come if the money isn?t restored. “They took 50 percent of our funding to give [to] service categories that traditionally don?t spend the money they get.”
There are about 28,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Maryland and 18,000 in Baltimore City, which has a newinfection rate that is three times the national average.
