GRANT MIX-UP HURTS AREA AIDS PATIENTS

A mix-up over a federal grant to help Missourians with AIDS is costing Cape Girardeau residents suffering with the disease.

There are about 70 people in Southeast Missouri who benefit from the Ryan White grant, named for a boy who became a national figure before dying of AIDS. Grant money pays for food, housing, utilities, medicine and doctor bills.

But Missouri's health director told state senators Wednesday that the program's $2.2 million in grant money, meant to last until April, is gone. Dr. Coleen Kivlahan also said there are $1 million to $1.5 million in unpaid bills related to the state-run AIDS program.

Nanci Gonder, public information officer for the Missouri Department of Health, said the cause was a huge increase in demand. While 685 Missourians were served between April and August of 1994, 1,531 were served during the same period this year.

That still doesn't explain why nobody kept track of mounting bills and kept dispensing services. Gonder only said her department would continue to look into causes and try to find ways of funding services to Missourians with AIDS.

An area AIDS service coordinator said the health department issued a memo ordering people like him to direct the media to Gonder. He didn't want to use his name, but said his agency was "in a holding pattern" until more information becomes available at an emergency meeting Oct. 4 in Jefferson City.

He said his clients use the money in the interim between being diagnosed with AIDS and receiving government assistance. For example, homeless people with AIDS can receive some rent money but must sign up for HUD assistance. Those with no money for food can get help from a food bank but must sign up for food stamps.

The service coordinator said he was angry with the health department for blaming the deficit on agencies that "overspent." In October 1994, he said, officials with the Health Resources and Services Administration told the agencies to spend more on their clients or they would lose the money.

Now, not a year later, the money is gone.

"If we find out Oct. 4 that the funding is down, we will probably make an appeal to the local communities," the service coordinator said. "We'll ask for dollars to be contributed for physicians and medication. That's our primary concern."

And that would most help people like Bob, who has AIDS and was receiving Ryan White money to pay for foot fungus medicine. Because AIDS breaks down its victims' immune systems, it takes strong, expensive medicine to combat problems like Bob's.

His medicine costs $560 a month, but Bob only makes $5 an hour at his job in a Cape Girardeau restaurant.

"I make just barely enough so I don't qualify for food stamps," he said. "I'm not sick enough for Medicaid and I don't have any insurance. I guess I won't go back to the doctor or get my medicine refilled."

Bob said there wasn't any warning before his grant money quit coming.