NEWSMEDICATION

This cause has been reporting on the ADAP Crisis for months now and most of the news we have shared has been bleak. Today we have some encouraging news.

AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) provide vital assistance to HIV-positive individuals who cannot afford the the incredibly expensive medications needed to treat and manage this devastating disease. Without these essential medications, a person’s HIV disease is more likely to progress to AIDS. HIV/AIDS can be life-threatening without these medications.

As of April 21, the waiting list for ADAP is at 7,674 people in 11 states. (The number was 5,100 in 10 states when we first began reporting about the ADAP Crisis in January.) These individuals are being denied coverage for their life-saving medications due to budget cuts on the federal and state levels. They are now at an even greater risk of seeing a drastic decline in their health while they wait for their medications.

Florida has been at the center of the ADAP Crisis since the beginning. Now it seems that the crisis could get even worse.

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), is a vital program that assists HIV-positive individuals with paying for the incredibly expensive medications needed to treat and manage this devastating disease. Without these essential medications, a person’s HIV disease is more likely to progress to AIDS. HIV/AIDS can become life-threatening.

For a variety of reasons, ADAP funding is being slashed in many states across the country. Thousands of HIV-positive people have been terminated from the program and thousands more are being placed on waiting lists. This means that a person living with HIV/AIDS may need to wait to receive the medications they need to save their life.

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Crisis continues. In fact, it is getting worse.

As of March 31, the waiting list for ADAP has increased to 7,745 people in 11 states. (The number was 5,100 in 10 states when we first began reporting about the ADAP Crisis in January.) That means right at this moment, there are close to 8,000 HIV-positive individuals waiting for financial assistance to pay for their HIV medications. They are being denied coverage for their life-saving medications due to budget cuts on the federal and state levels. They are now at an even greater risk of seeing a drastic decline in their health while they wait for their medications.

That's part one of the bad news. Part two is more disheartening. It seems that one pharmaceutical company (Pharma) has responded to the crisis ... by raising the prices of their HIV/AIDS medications. Seems they have a different definition of crisis.

As the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) continues to struggle for funding, pharma remains silent.

ADAP is an invaluable state program that assists HIV-positive individuals in paying for their very expensive medications. HIV medications are necessary to treat and manage HIV/AIDS and to prevent disease progression. These medications are necessary to keep a person living with HIV/AIDS alive. Indeed, they are the very reason HIV is now a chronic disease, and not acutely life-threatening.

For a variety of reasons, ADAP funding is being cut in states across the country, leaving many HIV+ adults unable to afford their medications.

The pharmaceutical companies (pharma) that develop and distribute these medications continue to contribute to the problem. The cost of HIV medications remains astronomically high within our country. These high costs are a primary reason that ADAP programs were created. Many people who are HIV-positive and living in poverty cannot conceive of paying for their meds on their own. To be sure, many more HIV-positive individuals with private insurance are also in need of ADAP due to the high costs and/or inadequate coverage.

Finally, some recognition from a top health official of the ADAP Crisis in America!

Former Surgeon General of the U.S., Dr. David Satcher, recently wrote an opinion piece for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution declaring that US government officials "must act to preserve drugs for HIV/AIDS."

AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) provide critical and life-saving medications to low-income people living with HIV who are unable to afford them. As HIV meds continue to be incredibly expensive, more and more people are seeking financial assistance. Unfortunately, states across the country continue to cut funding to this valuable program. The result is more HIV+ individuals unable to afford their medications, and therefore more HIV+ individuals at risk of death.

There are thousands of HIV-positive individuals being denied life-saving medications due to budget restrictions right here in the United States. This is the ADAP crisis, and it's not getting the attention it deserves.

ADAP, or AIDS Drug Assistance Program, is a vital state program that assists HIV-positive individuals with paying for the incredibly expensive medications needed to treat and manage this devastating disease. Without these essential medications, a person’s HIV disease is more likely to progress and become life-threatening.

Yet despite these critical facts, ADAP funding is being slashed in most states across the country. Thousands of HIV-positive people have been terminated from their state programs outright and thousands more are being placed on growing waiting lists. Other states have re-figured their ADAP requirements, thereby cutting many patients from their programs and putting countless others in jeopardy of losing coverage.

As state and federal budgets are squeezed of every last dollar, health programs across the country are fighting to save precious funds -- and lives. One program that is in serious crisis mode is the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), which helps low- and middle-income people living with HIV afford medication.

According to Housing Works' ADAP Watch, last week, the wait list to receive AIDS medication on the ADAP list grew to 6,235 people across 10 states. This number is increasing almost every month and has grown almost 4,000 percent since the summer of 2009. As a result of job less and the economy, many folks have been left without access to lifesaving drugs.

Since AIDS medication can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year, many cannot afford the treatment out-of-pocket. As covered on the Gay Rights blog, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is urging pharmaceutical companies to decrease the prices of their AIDS medication to help offset the ADAP crisis.

Most people can attest that getting a foodborne illness is no fun. It can mean a few days laid out on the couch, cursing the alleged batch of eggs or bag of spinach. But increasingly, these infections can be much more serious, resistant to the arsenal of antibiotics at a doctor's disposal.

With the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hard-to-treat foodborne infections are becoming more and more common. According to a report (pdf) released today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, foodborne illnesses due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the so-called "superbugs", have been occurring since the 1970s, but there has been a steady increase in these outbreaks every decade since then. Forty percent of these type of outbreaks have occurred in the last decade.

The reason? Widespread use of antibiotics on factory farms leads to the creation of the superbugs. Last month, the FDA released a report showing that over 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics are being used in food-producing animals. The drugs are usually given at sub-therapeutic doses, meaning they aren't used to treat sick animals, but rather, to increase growth.

Innovative, cost-saving methods for medicine dispersal should be applauded, not eliminated. But in Iowa, a novel telemedicine program that allows women access to the abortion pill without having to go to a clinic for the drug to be dispensed is under attack.  As covered previously on Change.org, the program helps women, particularly in rural areas, access the pill. Instead of an in-person meeting, the doctor consults with the patient via a video teleconference, and then unlocks a container by remote control to release the pill. It saves time, increases access and reduces costs.

But as covered on the Women's Rights blog, Iowa state legislators are working to ban the practice, and Nebraska, which doesn't even offer the service yet, is planning to introduce a bill that would require doctors to be in the same room when the pills are dispensed.

This would serve to restrict access to the abortion pill for women in areas where there may not be a doctor willing to provide a surgery. Although the pill, marketed as Miseprex, hasn't increased the number of abortions in the U.S., more and more women are chosing medication abortions when they do have them. But even though use of the pill has become widespread, it has not susbstantially improved women's geographic access to abortion -- most medication abortions are provided at or near facilities that already offer surgical abortions. The telemedicine option would help to solve that.

Even those of us who don't take hormonal medications are exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals -- in agriculture, food, industry and consumer products.

Since hormones regulate a vast number of bodily processes, maybe it's time to cultivate a little more respect towards them.

When Sanjay Gupta first reported last Spring on the Safe Chemicals Act, (a new move to finally regulate toxic chemicals to protect our health), he interviewed a spokeswoman for the chemical industry who asked, "Why all this fuss about synthetic chemicals? Why don't you go after natural ones instead?"

Her statement perfectly captures our paradoxical cultural attitude: Anything man-made, patentable, and for sale, is inherently better than anything made by living biology.

For over 35 years, we’ve been laissez-faire about asbestos, formaldehyde, carcinogens and other chemicals which disrupt bodily hormones, and create DNA changes. We absorb these chemicals from products and the environment, and think nothing of it.

Meanwhile, we strive to control the ebb and flow of the natural hormones our bodies produce. It’s inconvenient to have your period or a hot flash and something has to be done. But carcinogens aren’t inconvenient?

I don’t get why we spend millions fine-tuning the female hormonal cycle, while we shrug over the impact of Corexit in Gulf waters, seafood and beaches? Our innate hormones are so inconvenient, that Seasonique, a new extended use birth control pill eliminates periods entirely. It's marketed to young women with an ad campaign with faux insurgent undertones,

"Who says 'that time of month'  has to be every month? Who says?"

How manipulative for pharmaceutical companies to empower women to reject the physical signs of their femaleness. In my FB page, where people love to speak up, a wise-ass commenter replied, "Mother nature, that's who!