AIDS

AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a leading voice for AIDS patients, announced Tuesday it has launched a statewide media campaign calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature in the state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP, which helps cover HIV medication for thousands of Floridians.

‘To take people who are already on medication, take them off that, in my mind, that’s almost like a death sentence.’

Participants in ADAP will be able to access funds to cover their HIV medication after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Tuesday to mitigate the cuts imposed earlier this month.

The House on Thursday passed bill (HB 697) that includes a stopgap measure to restore cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program through June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

House Speaker Daniel Perez was coy when asked whether the House would sign off on the offer.

Once adopted, the proposed rules would implement previously announced changes the DOH said would take effect March 1 to ADAP to avert a projected $120 million shortfall.

A state administrative judge has agreed to expedite a legal challenge to a new DeSantis administration policy that could leave as many 16,000 people with HIV and AIDS without access to prescribed medications or health insurance discounts.

The government provides HIV medicines free of charge. Yet in one Indigenous territory, cases and deaths are increasing at an alarming rate.

The concert will be held at the Watsco Center at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. World AIDS Day is Sunday, December 1.

Activist Pamela Sneed says this year's walk will honor Black artists' contributions that have been erased from AIDS narratives.

Miami Dade and Palm Beach are two of the counties in Florida seeing increases in the rates of people 50 and older who are testing positive for HIV. Experts say doctors and patients alike should consider the importance of safe sex education and testing for the virus among older people, too.

The confessed Parkland shooter pleads guilty. State Senator Annette Taddeo announces her run for governor and a new exhibit looks at misinformation during the AIDS crisis in the '80s and COVID now.