| The Epidemic of Drug-Related AIDS |
MONTANA |
Saving lives
If the federal funding ban is lifted and clean needle programs are put in place in areas where they are needed, as many as 10,000 American lives can be saved by the year 2000.
Saving tax dollars
Each AIDS illness and death exacts an uncountable cost in human pain and suffering. Each AIDS illness and death has a very countable cost in dollars.
Using sophisticated mathematical models, a University of California team of investigators estimates that it costs between $4,000 and $12,000 in clean needle program expenses for each HIV infection averted over a five-year period. This is, of course, far lower than the estimated $119,000 lifetime cost of treating an HIV-infected person. In the case of AIDS, an ounce of prevention is very much less costly than a pound of cure.
Lifting the ban on federal funding of clean needle programs will permit communities in Montana to save valuable lives that will otherwise be lost and save billions of federal health care dollars.
Web presentation co-sponsored by the Dogwood Center, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, and Safe Works AIDS Project.