San Francisco City Hall will dedicate $1.2 million to the plan and MAC Cosmetics will donate $500,000 through their AIDS fund. Doctor Paul Volberding was among the first to treat patients in the early 1980s.
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The city is relying heavily on two initiatives. Mayor Lee and Superintendent Richard Carranza announced new strategies to achieve these goals: jointly finance at least one new development in the City for educator housing, develop a rental subsidy program for teachers, renew the Teacher Next Door program that provides down payment assistance to purchase homes in the City, and fund Housing Navigators-counselors to connect teachers with resources available to them through these new programs, existing Below Market Rate programs, and eviction prevention services.
Supervisor David Campos also praised investment while noting that “we will be successful only if we are able to target the most vulnerable among us. This improves clinical and public health outcomes by preserving health, extending life expectancy and reducing HIV transmission”. One of the initiatives is getting people suffering with HIV into an antiretroviral treatment program much faster than before, sometimes the same day they are diagnosed.
Funding disparities were a key issue, Raviglione said, noting that worldwide funding for HIV/Aids is 10 times higher than for TB, with $8 million spent on HIV/Aids interventions, compared with a total of $800,000 spent on TB.
“We can, in our lifetime, end this epidemic for everyone”, he said. African-American gay men have the highest rate of new diagnoses.
Dr. Susan Buchbinder speaks during a press conference to announce additional funds toward the “get to zero” HIV/AIDS initiative at City Hall in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, October 29, 2015. She said she lost everything including her job, apartment and will to live. In 2013, there were just over 350 new cases. “If it keeps doing what it is doing, I have a strong feeling that they will be successful at ending the epidemic as we know it. Not every last case – we’ll never get there – but the overall epidemic”.
They attempted to create more accurate estimates by accounting for factors contributing to the under-reporting of HIV/AIDS deaths-including the under-registration of deaths in general and misattribution of AIDS deaths to other causes.
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“What we say at MAC is, if you can sell a lipstick, you can save a life”, said Karen Buglisi, global brand president for MAC. “Increasing access to critical prevention measures like PrEP is a critical part of this – but we still have a long way to go”.
