Wellington, February 3, 2019
The Health Ministry’s slashing of $200,000 from the AIDS Foundation’s budget has been overturned – a week out from Auckland’s Big Gay Out festival.
‘Ending HIV’ is the them of this year’s 20th Anniversary Festival.
The Foundation was told late on Friday (February 1, 2019) that the Ministry had secured the funding previously removed from the Organisation.
AIDS Foundation Chief Executive Jason Myers said that the money was not significant as it only represents about 5 percent of the foundation’s Health Ministry funding.
Timely funding
“But we really are in a time that we have all the tools available to end HIV transmission in New Zealand. So, our message has been this is a time to invest and scale up our response rather than disinvest and that is why are really happy that they have managed to find this money and that funding won’t be interrupted.”
Mr Myers said that he was told initially that the funding was cut because the Health Ministry needed to find some ‘efficiencies.’
-Under Special Arrangement with www.rnz.co.nz
