Money may go to areas with greater prevention needs
Iowa prides itself on having one of the lowest HIV infection rates in the nation, but that positive statistic has triggered a negative consequence: federal officials are planning to take a chunk of the state’s HIV prevention funds and redistribute that money to areas with higher needs.
In the next five years, Iowa expects to lose half of its funding for HIV prevention. Worst case scenario, by 2016, Iowa would lose 54 percent of the money for HIV risk reduction and education it has been receiving for the past decade from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Such a drastic cut is expected to hurt HIV programming statewide and eliminate some of the jobs central to educating non-infected members of the public, said Randy Mayer, chief of the bureau of HIV, STD and Hepatitis for the Iowa Department of Public Health.
“This is much more dramatic than anything we’ve experienced with any other departments,” Mayer said.
[...]
Complete article at The Gazette : http://bit.ly/qSGjGh
