ADAP Crisis National Call-In Alert, Starting June 14

Summary: Over 1600 people are currently on waiting lists to receive antiretroviral treatment through the AIDS Drug Assistance Program -- a crisis predicted for over a year. In the next few weeks, Congress will consider funding for next year. Starting now and during the summer it will be important for people to talk to their representatives and let them know why this program is important.

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As of June 7, 2004, 1,629 people are on ADAP waiting lists in 11 states due to underfunding of the program, according to the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. These are people who have been prescribed treatment for HIV and have no other way to pay for it, so most of them are going without. The program needs a $217 million dollar increase for fiscal 2005 to end the crisis next year -- plus an emergency appropriation for the current fiscal year to treat people on waiting lists, beginning now and ending March 31, 2005. (ADAP's fiscal year is delayed six months from the Federal fiscal year, which begins in October 2004, to allow contracts to be completed.) This year, for the first time, the new money in April could not treat the people who had been on the waiting lists from the year before. The good news is that 25 U.S. senators so far have signed a Dear Colleague letter asking for the fiscal 2005 increase and the emergency appropriation.

The SAVE ADAP committee of the AIDS Treatment Activist Coalition (ATAC) and others are beginning a summer grassroots action campaign with a "call Congress week" during June 14-18. But calls after the 18th will help as well, since the House of Representatives is expected to begin deciding on ADAP and other AIDS funding levels in the next few weeks. Congress needs to hear more from voters who care about the program.

Information on how to help will be posted at http://www.atac-usa.org (click on the Save ADAP Committee). Information about ADAP in your state is available at http://www.atdn.org (click on The Access Project).

For important action alerts on this and other AIDS issues, sign up for Project Inform's Treatment Action Network (TAN). For more information on TAN, see
http://www.projectinform.org/org/policy.html

An alert explaining background you should know will be posted at http://www.atac-usa.org. That site is now being revised, however, so until the alert is available there we have posted a copy at
http://www.aidsnews.org/adap

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