Cuomo Plans $195-Million Campaign Against AIDS

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo on Wednesday announced a five-year program to combat AIDS in New York state, and he said $193 million provided in his proposed 1989-90 budget, plus federal funds, would almost cover first-year costs.

The governor said at a news conference that he would amend his budget next week, seeking an additional $2.5 million. The money will be earmarked for expanded AIDS education and training and for studies of the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, in the newborn and hemophiliacs.

‘Aggressive Response’

The budget amendment would bring the state’s total first-year expenditures on the AIDS program to $195.5 million, which Cuomo described as “the most aggressive response to a public health epidemic ever developed by this or any other state in the nation.”

But gay rights groups, who contended Tuesday that the plan would be useless unless Cuomo substantially increases his proposed AIDS spending, said the deadly disease could not wait for next year’s budget.

“No longer can we wait,” said Brent Nicholson Earle of New York, a spokesman for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, which has accused the state of foot-dragging on its acquired immune deficiency syndrome program.

“We need this money now, not in the next fiscal year,” Earle said. “I have a friend who died in St. Luke’s-Roosevelt yesterday, and it took him three days to get a bed.”

Gay rights groups and other organizations under the umbrella of the AIDS coalition demanded Tuesday in Albany that Cuomo add $157.1 million to the $193 million he has proposed for AIDS prevention and treatment.

But Cuomo defended his plan.

“We are doing this in the face of a possible $2.6-billion state deficit this year, but no need is greater than AIDS,” the governor said. “We have the money for the first year of the plan from state and federal sources, and we are going to do it right.”

Major efforts under the plan will be an expansion of health care resources and drug treatment programs, creation of innovative housing arrangements for homeless AIDS victims and improvement of medical care for state prisoners with AIDS.

Also included will be development of special services for women, babies and adolescents infected with the HIV virus, integration of AIDS education and staff training in all state-funded Health and Human Services programs, and strengthening of human rights protections for people with AIDS.