In an attempt to cover the cost of children who were left without their parents under Trump’s administration, money will be cut from funding of HIV/AIDS programs despite a rise in diagnoses amongst young men who have sex with men.
The Department of Health and Human Services aims to channel $266 million of its funding to run several programs to aid Unaccompanied Alien Children, by transferring $80 million form existing programs, including $5.7 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program.
In a letter obtained by Yahoo News, HHS Secretary Alex Azar shared with Senator of Washington State Patty Murray that he intends to reallocate funds from the healthcare research to tackle rising costs of providing for immigrant children in custody. The lack of funding is sure to negatively impact the current research into the virus in the US.
The letter details the exact figures, and exactly where the funds are to come form. Azar also earmarked for re-allocation is a total of $16.7 million which will be cut from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes $3.8 million that would’ve been dedicated to the prevention of HIV/AIDS as well as hepatitis, tuberculosis and other sexually transmitted diseases.
This news comes alongside the Centre of Center for Disease Control and Prevention releasing figures that indicate HIV diagnoses are on the rise amongst people between 13-29 years old who are men who have sex with men. The figures collected revealed a 2,554 rise in diagnoses from 2008 to 2016 in that age group. They also find that African American men made up a hugely disproportionate percentage of new diagnoses, making up almost half of diagnoses amongst young people. Despite the troubling figures in young people, the results were positive over all seeing a 0.2% decline in the number of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS over those eight years.
