AIDS Czar Visits New York City

On a visit to New York last week, White House Office of National AIDS Policy Director Scott Evertz sought to reassure advocates that HIV/AIDS won't vanish from the Bush administration's radar screen in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States. "Nothing has changed around HIV/AIDS. In fact, as you know in New York City, you've discovered there's a population of folks who donated blood whose blood tested positive for HIV, so if anything we've got more people who are in need of treatment and services than before Sept. 11," Evertz told reporters last Tuesday before touring the offices of Gay Men's Health Crisis.

Also during his three-day visit, Evertz met with representatives of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force, the Latino Commission on AIDS, the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS and the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS. He said that "even in the midst of post-Sept. 11, the administration is responding really positively to the continuing need for HIV/AIDS care, treatment and prevention."

Evertz praised AIDS organizations' prevention efforts as "being fairly effective. But clearly we could be doing a better job in certain communities. So as we move forward, we're not going to throw out the baby with the bath water; those prevention efforts that are working will remain in place, because we've said from the very beginning that we were going to let the science drive the policy." Activists have long called for federal support for needle exchange programs. "What I sense is that we may take kind of a Republican approach to that," said Evertz, who is Republican and gay, adding that "at the very least, the administration isn't going to intervene, and may in fact keep our mouths shut on that issue." Evertz noted that AIDS groups, particularly smaller organizations working in hard-to-reach communities, "all need more resources."

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