AIDS, funding and the lost of public trust
In every major urban city, rural community and suburban town AIDS has a home. It doesn’t matter whether you are straight or gay, white, black, red, yellow or brown, AIDS is right around the corner. For folks who have the highest infection and death rates, primarily Black, Latino and/or gay, your care plays a significant role in your day-to-day life. The services you receive are vital to your survival. In DC as well as New York, a number of agencies and nonprofits have been caught squandering the resources used for housing, food, healthcare and other services needed in at-risk communities.
The organizations who have received hundreds of thousands dollars, even millions have victimized the very people they are suppose to serve. Misappropriation of funds, services promised but not provided, supervisors and specific staff helping themselves out to cash bonuses, gifts and trips while clients and patients lose out of access to services and/or necessary AIDS awareness and prevention information. And when the accused is caught, fingers point to everyone but themselves. Where are the checks and balances in government funding???? Hundreds of organizations have already suffered through funding loss during 8 years of the Bush administration and then more cuts due to the recession. Abusing an ill equipped system only further justifies the lack of trust and confirms the lack of accountability.
This is not to say that all AIDS organizations much less all non-profits misuse their funding. Many organizations are providing incredible services to individuals, groups and families around the country. What hurts their good work is the selfish acts of a few who threaten the funding opportunities of other groups and the credibility of service based organizations. If any good can come out of this is the creation of a National AIDS Action Plan that has the input of several organizations, agencies, advocates, PWA’s (people living with AIDS), PWLHIV (people living with HIV), healthcare professionals and policy makers to develop a plan that recommends but not necessarily oversees funding, programming and policy. A plan that can look at the overall system of AIDS services throughout the country, reduce redunancy in key areas, duplicate successful programs, track progress and eliminate or at least reduce waste. A plan that can look a the success and failures of prevention, awareness and care systems around the world and partner with other countries that have similar trends but with better outcomes. We have the resources, technology and research to do a better job. So, hopefully in 5 to 10 years, a HIV+ woman won’t die alone in a park only a few blocks from the HIV/AIDS administration or from resources that could have provided the help she not only needed but deserved.
