AIDS
Amena Bhutta ♦ Mobeen Farooq ♦ Christienne Damatac ♦ Miriam Bhutta
Conservative government policies exacerbated the spread of AIDS/HIV in NYC during the 1980s. Our project exhibits the many ways in which the spread of HIV was deeply affected by the government’s policy decisions.
There were budget cuts from every level of government (federal, state, and city). Consequently, those cuts weakened the benefits and infrastructure of the public sector. Funding for public health, safety, and social and medical services were all heavily reduced during the 1980s, which negatively affected their capability to efficiently respond to problems such as drug addiction and AIDS.
Furthermore, the decreased spending for human services was one of the factors that led to an increase in HIV infection because of the closing down of drug centers, reduced preventive medical services, and a complete lack of health education to teach people about AIDS.
We are not proposing that the government caused the AIDS epidemic in New York City; rather, the policies exacerbated the spread of the virus. Decisions to reduce spending in everything but the military forced the marginalized branches of society into situations where the possibility of contracting HIV became inevitable. AIDS was more prevalent in populations of the homeless, drug addicts, prisoners, the poor, and homosexuals. Wiser fiscal and social decisions, without the influence of politics and apathy, could have saved thousands of lives and billions of tax money.
A I D S / H I V
I N
N E W Y O R K C I T Y
Produced by Christienne Damatac, Mobeen Farooq, Amena Bhutta, Miriam Bhutta
Macaulay Honors College, Brooklyn College
Links