Georgia State Cutting HIV Prevention Staff

Georgia Department of Public Health (GDPH) has informed 20 employees in health districts across the state they will likely lose their jobs at the end of the month, as nearly $4 million in federal HIV prevention funds will shift to metropolitan Atlanta.

CDC is strategically focusing prevention efforts on major urban areas with concentrated HIV epidemics. In 2009, of the more than 40,000 Georgian living with HIV/AIDS, two-thirds were in metro Atlanta.

But Patrick O’Neal, director of the health protection division of GDPH, and other health officials are worried the move will hurt the state.

“When we have cuts like this, there seems to always be a somewhat disproportionate impact on those rural areas and that really troubles us,” said O’Neal, noting that two nurses whose jobs may be cut also monitor other infectious diseases in their districts. “Eliminating those positions not only is going to be a real problem in terms of HIV prevention efforts, but it also is going to pose a real challenge to the district to identify outbreaks of anything else that may be occurring.”

At least one staffer has been transferred to a job focusing on STD prevention, and officials are trying to save other jobs as well, O’Neal said.

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.

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