While the Bryn Mawr Girl?s Choir sang encouraging songs on the eve of World AIDS Day, the reality in Baltimore is anything but positive.
Federal funding and support is faltering and local charities are try to pick up the pieces, Baltimore activists and officials said.
“It?s good that we get some publicity once a year for World AIDS Day, said AIDS patient and activist Arnold Hampton. “The rest of the year people just forget we exist.”
But Hampton isn?t one disgruntled patient. Officials had little upbeat to offer at aMaryland AIDS Administration ceremony Friday in Baltimore?s Lyric Opera House.
“The goal of the Maryland AIDS Administration on every day, not just World AIDS Day, is to call attention to the issue, … and to fight the stigmatism that attaches to HIV and AIDS,” said Heather Hauck, administration director.
By the beginning of this year, 32,727 people in Maryland were known to be living with HIV, she said, including 2,145 people confirmed infected in 2006.
“There are not enough seats in First Mariner Arena to seat all of the people in this region that are affected by AIDS,” said Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. “Baltimore has the second highest rate of AIDS in the nation. That is a distinction no city would want to have.”
Federal money pumped into the Merck AIDS vaccine trial went up in smoke in September when human testing failed catastrophically. Four of the 58 participants became infected with HIV after receiving all three doses, leading federal regulators to halt the trial.
Money is being spent on ineffectual vaccines because the real solution will be much more difficult to pull off, said Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology and the world?s leading researcher on AIDS. It would require targeting and destroying all HIV particles before they can begin doing damage, something traditional immunizations do not accomplish.
“The traditional vaccine … lowers the amount of virus to keep people from getting full-blown AIDS, but the question is, for how long? Eventually variants are going to get around the vaccine,” Gallo told The Examiner.
The picture doesn?t get much better for prevention, care and treatment funding, Hampton said. “On the streets, I don?t see much help.”
Federal money is being cut and attention diverted from America?s streets to Africa, said AIDS activists and educator Tony Johnston, who helps head Baltimore?s Faith in Action initiative.
“We?re losing our Ryan White funding,” said AIDS activists and educator Tony Johnston, who helps head Baltimore?s Faith in Action initiative of the 1990 program to improve care and support of patients. “We?re putting all this money into fighting AIDS in Africa, when the problem is right here.”
While San Fransisco and three other jurisdictions saw an increase under a plan engineered by Baltimore native Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., some of that money came from local coffers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Maryland, which is second in the nation for new AIDS cases, lost 5 percent of the $36 million expected next year, including cuts to the $20 million slated for greater Baltimore.
