AIDS Project

In a May 5 story in The Times about San Diego’s two primary AIDS service providers (“When Prevention Is Too Late, Fund Helps”), your reporter was given inaccurate information about the San Diego AIDS Project.

The San Diego AIDS Project provides a number of significant services directly to people with AIDS, their families and loved ones. It is inaccurate and untrue to portray the San Diego Aids Project as the provider of only prevention and education, as The Times reporter wrote.

Our services include a free legal clinic, which has handled several hundred cases since it was established last spring. We offer free mental health counseling; a buddy program, which provides companionship for those who are sick; an extensive recreation program, with trips to Disneyland; the transportation program, which helps AIDS patients get to doctors, home from the hospital and to the grocery store; a visitation program for people in the hospital and confined to homes; support groups; peer counseling; AIDS Emergency Team; massage therapy; referrals to medical help and nutritional therapy and help in solving bureaucratic hassles. In fact, the San Diego AIDS Project boasts about a dozen important programs to help people with AIDS.

The San Diego AIDS Project has a contract with the State of California Office of AIDS. It supports some, but not all, of our educational programs. Additionally, the project receives a small contract for a full-time transportation program for people with AIDS. The county does not financially support the project’s programs.

Most of the AIDS Project’s services are made possible through the generosity of private contributors. Due to financial limitations, the needs of people with AIDS will be difficult to serve without additional resources.

LINELL FROMM

Executive Director

San Diego AIDS Project