Business Leaders Call for More U.S. AIDS Funds : Health: Conference is told that hard-hit cities should get hurricane-type emergency programs. A $600-million Kennedy bill is supported.
Members of the National Business Leadership Conference on AIDS, like President Bush, called Thursday for an end to the stigma that surrounds the disease, although some castigated the Administration for not spending more to fight it.
“As business leaders, we must make it clear that we expect more of the government than mere words,” said Robert D. Haas, chairman and chief executive of Levi Strauss & Co., in a sharply worded speech that preceded the President’s. “Even if the private sector helps create ‘a thousand points of light’ across the land, it will be of no avail if there is darkness in the White House.”
Haas called on the federal government to enact a number of initiatives, including a disaster relief plan for the 13 hardest hit metropolitan areas. The $600-million bill was introduced earlier this month by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
The Bush White House has asked Congress for almost $3.5 billion for AIDS--which includes Medicaid spending. Not including Medicaid, the figure is $1.6 billion.
Haas argued that such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and his own city, San Francisco, “need emergency help that parallels the aid we provide to communities in the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.”
He charged that the President’s decision to concentrate the resources of his war on drugs on law enforcement--rather than on prevention and treatment of drug abuse--”represents nothing less than a death sentence” for many needle-using addicts and their sex partners and children. AIDS is spread by the use of contaminated needles.
Nearly 500 business and labor leaders and AIDS workers attended a daylong session of the leadership conference.
Time Warner Inc. Co-Chairman J. Richard Munro noted that most corporations are relative newcomers in the fight against AIDS. Five years ago, he said, Fortune magazine surveyed top corporate executives and responses “ranged from casual to callous.”
Even three years ago, he said, “nobody would have shown up here.”
Leaders from the epicenters of the epidemic shared their expertise with others who are still bracing for their first cases.
Indeed, Dr. James W. Curran of the federal Centers for Disease Control told the gathering that epidemiologists are currently witnessing “the ruralization of AIDS” as more and more cases are diagnosed in small towns and cities.
“We have had no AIDS cases among employees, but it is just a matter of time,” said Dr. Stephen Goldman, corporate medical director of Mack Trucks Inc. in Allentown, Pa.
In contrast, Munro said: “We began to lose talented, wonderful people at Time very early in the epidemic.”
He said that policies to keep infected workers on the job and reimburse sick employees for alternatives to hospital care are both humane and “in your business interest.”
AIDS, according to the CDC, has stricken 125,000 U.S. citizens and killed 75,000.
Although the agency recently lowered its estimate of the number of infected Americans, CDC still forecasts that the cumulative total of AIDS cases will at least triple, to between 390,000 and 480,000, by the end of 1993.
