U.S. agency deals Hawaii bitter blow for World AIDS Day

THE ISSUE The federal government has denied funds for Hawaii's only AIDS-HIV clinical trials program.

LOSS of a federal grant for a University of Hawaii program will cause profound harm to hundreds of HIV and AIDS patients, doctors, medical researchers and educators, not only in the islands but in Asia as well.

Moreover, the termination could cut key Asian and Pacific Island populations from clinical studies that devise therapies even as 27 percent of AIDS cases reported by June this year were among those groups.

Gov. Linda Lingle and Hawaii's congressional delegation should intervene and ask that the federal agency reconsider its decision to pull funding of as much as $2 million a year from Hawaii. The amount of money -- small by government spending standards -- is overshadowed by the far-reaching benefits derived.

With little explanation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health, has chosen not to provide funds for Hawaii's only AIDS-HIV research program.

Though the Hawaii AIDS Clinical Trials Unit -- established in 1990 by the John A. Burns School of Medicine -- conducts research, it also provides last-hope treatment for patients not responding to conventional regimens. Its doctors treat patients on the neighbor islands where physicians are in short supply, HIV-positive pregnant woman so their babies avoid infection, and consults and advises other doctors with its advanced expertise.

The UH unit, which initially received funds as a minority institution, recently has been required to compete for grants among a wider group of facilities, and had been successful even against big-name establishments like Johns Hopkins University.

When grant requirements were again changed, the unit was confident it would qualify since the federal agency was to consider geographic disbursal and international sites, strong suits for UH with its Bangkok satellite facility and treatment programs in Vietnam. In fact, the unit was poised to begin work in military hospitals and clinics in Vietnam in January.

However, officials were told last week that they would not be receiving funding for the unit that has provided 35 percent of national research of Pacific Island and Asian populations and is the only site in the Pacific region. Because the grant made up the bulk of the unit's total budget, it will not be able to continue its work.

The loss will deny progressive treatment to patients in critical need who cannot travel to other states as easily as those on the mainland. It will decrease research into treatment of ethnic groups often under-represented in medical studies.

As Cecilia Shikuma, the program's director, put it, the AIDS-HIV unit is the "only show in town." As Hawaii observes World AIDS Day tomorrow, the state's political leaders and the public should tell the bureaucrats in Washington that they should not take down the tent here.