">Hiv Patients | hundreds Of Hiv Patients Now Off Waiting List For Life-saving Medication
RALEIGH, N.C. –
About one in four North Carolinians infected with the HIV virus has it and does not know it. So when the President announced a plan Tuesday to decrease the occurrence of the disease nationwide, state health officials were pleased.
“For the first time in our nation’s history, we are going to have a national HIV/AIDS strategy,” said Jacquelyn Clymore, who is director of the HIV/STD Program for North Carolina. “Particularly the idea of preventing more infections; trying to get a real handle on the epidemic and make sure that people know what their risks are; get tested, of course, to make sure they know what their status is and then prevent new infections. That is still the only real way we have in controlling and squashing the HIV epidemic.”
The North Carolina Division of Public Health estimates there are more than 35,000 people who are HIV positive or have AIDS. A health department spokesman says the number of people who have it and don’t know it seems to be decreasing because of awareness campaigns.
“We have 56,000 new cases of HIV every year in this country. It is definitely still an epidemic,” Clymore said.
On Tuesday, the Division of Public Health announced that the state re-opened its AIDS Drug Assistance Program effective July 11. The $14 million appropriation from state lawmakers will allow the program not only to continue to serve more than 4,600 enrollees, but also will open the program to an additional 627 people who have been on a waiting list since January.
“We now have fully 50 percent of our total ADAP budget coming from the state,” Clymore said. “That’s actually a real rarity across the country. It’s a real moment to celebrate.”
Clymore said until the funding came through, North Carolina had the longest waiting list for critical HIV drugs in the country.
“We will now have one of the lower ones,” she said. “This is a huge national problem. On the national level, this is the highest waiting list that has ever been seen in our country.”
State epidemiology numbers show that in 2007 HIV
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