Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.
HIV and AIDS patients could languish on waiting lists for medication, putting their health in danger, due to a lack of funding for the state's AIDS program, those who work with the disease warned this week.
Gov. Kenny Guinn's proposed budget does not increase state funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program despite the Nevada Health Division's requests for increases. The program almost ran out of money last year and had to seek emergency funds from a Clark County program to stay afloat, according to the Health Division.
"As a person who takes care of these patients when they get sick in the hospital, I know that if you don't treat it, people get sicker," said Dr. Jerry Cade, director of HIV services at University Medical Center.
"Aside from what it (the state funding shortfall) does to these people, it is not cost-effective," he added. "They are unable to work and they take up a lot more resources."
The Health Division asked for $4.5 million to fund the program in the coming biennium, but the governor's budget recommends no increase from the previously budgeted $2.7 million, division spokeswoman Martha Framsted said.
The state funds supplement about $6 million in federal funds for the drug program, which supplies medication to HIV and AIDS sufferers who cannot afford them.
About 870 Nevadans, most of whom live in Clark County, receive medicine through the program, officials said.
An estimated 220 more people are expected to need help from the program over the next two years, Framsted said.
Nevada was one of the last states to come up with funding for AIDS drugs. The Legislature approved the funding in 1997 when the situation was near crisis, said Assemblyman David Parks, D-Las Vegas, who pushed for the funding at the time.
"We found a lot of people who were clogging up the public health system because they did not have insurance to cover medications and the like," said Parks, who serves on the state AIDS Advisory Task Force.
The Medicaid-style AIDS drug program was found to be much cheaper than treating sick AIDS patients, he said.
The program's waiting list, which was six months long in 1997, didn't disappear until 1999. Now, patients who qualify can be enrolled in the program as soon as their paperwork is processed. But some are afraid that situation could change.
"There is major concern about this," Parks said. "We don't want to run out of money a year out and end up putting people on a long wait list for medication."
Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin said if the funding was important enough, the Legislature would include it.
"That's what the whole legislative process is about," Bortolin said. "That funding item will hopefully get its day in the Legislature for people to express their concerns."
The governor's proposed budget includes $276 million in new spending for health and human services over the biennium, with an emphasis on mental health.
The drug program's funding from the state has never increased since it was enacted, Cade said. But the population of HIV and AIDS patients has steadily increased as AIDS has become a treatable chronic disease rather than a fatal one.
In Clark County, there were 2,869 HIV cases and 4,113 AIDS cases as of December 2004, according to the county Health District.
Nevada's rate of AIDS infection was among the country's highest in 2003, the last year for which national statistics are available from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Nevada ranked 12th in the nation for adult and adolescent AIDS cases per 100,000 people.
Most of the high-ranking states were on the East Coast. West of the Mississippi River, Nevada had the third-highest AIDS rate after California and Texas.
More funds are needed for AIDS drugs in Nevada because both the number of cases and the price of the medications are expected to increase in the coming years, Cade said.
AIDS cases are projected to increase by 9 percent per year, while drug prices will go up by 6 percent per year.
Even without any increase, more money would be needed for the program, which in the last funding period fell $925,000 short.
To cover the shortfall, the state convinced Clark County's Ryan White Planning Council -- which administers federal funds for urban AIDS programs -- to pitch in with money that otherwise would have gone to other AIDS-related needs, according to the state Health Division.
The consequences for patients who don't get medication can be dire, Cade said. Stopping or reducing medication can be more dangerous than never taking any medicine to begin with because the virus mutates rapidly -- it can become resistant to one common medication within two weeks.
"The key to treating the disease in this day and age is to keep people on their meds," Cade said.
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