THE only organisation in Britain which provides counselling for Irish people with HIV/AIDS may close because its annual £120,000 British health department funding is being withdrawn.
The Inner London HIV Health Commissioners' Group has decided that "a shift of resources" should be implemented in line with a reduction in allocation for treatment and care services, announced by the department last year.
Positively Irish Action on Aids provides "culturally specific" counselling, principally to Irish people in Britain with HIV/AIDS. PIAA director Ms Siobhan Riordan believes that if the centre loses department funding, a third of its annual budget, it will "set a precedent to close all Irish support services in Britain."
"We have seen nearly 300 people with HIV/AIDS in the three months of this year alone and over 1,000 since we began in 1989."
She adds: "Most of the people we see here spend a lot of time toing and froing between Britain and Ireland and we are able to maintain a continuity of care by putting them in touch with other, support organisations when they return to Ireland."
The ILHHCG meets today to discuss the possibility of allocating a portion of its £30,000 "transitional fund" to PIAA.
It is a minuscule amount, says Ms Riordan. "As far as we are, concerned the meeting will only discuss the allocation of the fund's money but sometimes I do feel hopeful that they may change their minds. We were informed by the ILHHCG that within two months we would lose our funding and the centre would close.
The ILHHCG have said that those Irish people with HIV/AIDS who come to us for help can be absorbed by the wider NHS."
But, says Ms Riordan: "I that they will just stop using support services and return to Ireland and add to the burden on finances of the services there."
A representative from ILHHCG told The Irish Times that the decision to withdraw the grant was due to an 8 per cent cut in the health department's care services budget. The cuts, he said, would "maximise the diversity of the services throughout London and lead to greater stability of HIV/AIDS provision in the city as a whole".