House AIDS-Fund Bill Includes S.D. as County Tally Passes 2,000 Cases

An eleventh-hour effort to count AIDS cases in San Diego County sent the total past 2,000 as of May, qualifying the county to share in $4.5 billion in AIDS funding approved by the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday.

County officials welcome the action by the House, because the Senate version of the bill would leave San Diego without any part of the AIDS disaster relief, said Binnie Callender, chief of the office of AIDS coordination. The two bills still must be resolved in conference committee.

The House bill would bring San Diego about $8 million in the first year of a five-year program, Callender said.

This AIDS disaster relief would be the first major funding available for treatment programs for people infected with the AIDS virus, she said.

“There’s money for research, there’s money for education--certainly not enough for either, but money in those areas--and far, far less for direct services,” Callender said.

The money will be especially welcome because a small federal grant funding a prototype AIDS treatment program in the county expires Oct. 1, she noted.

To qualify for aid under the Senate version of the AIDS bill, cities were required to have reported 2,000 AIDS cases by March 31, 1990. San Diego County health officials had launched a last-minute hunt for unreported AIDS cases to meet that deadline, but could only reach 1,910 by that date.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), extended the cutoff date to June 30 so that San Diego could qualify. It passed 408 to 14 Wednesday.

In the 408-14 vote on the Waxman bill Wednesday, the only California congressman to vote against it was a Coronado Republican, Duncan Hunter.

His chief of staff, John Palafoutas, said Thursday that Hunter voted against the bill on principle, even though it would benefit his San Diego district.

“It’s an unusual step for Congress to have funding for a particular disease,” Palafoutas said. “He didn’t like the precedent that established.”

San Diego and Jersey City, N.J., are the only two cities that the Waxman bill’s later cutoff would bring into the program. Fourteen cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, would be covered by either bill.

AIDS figures reported by the county Wednesday showed 2,048 cases in the county since 1981, 138 more than had been found by March 31.

Doctors and hospitals went back through their records to find those extra cases, Callender said.

More than half of the county’s AIDS patients, 1,222, had died as of May 31, the county reported.

Of the total cases, 1,959 have been in males, 89 in females, and 16 in children younger than 13.