Whitman-Walker Clinic Closes Maryland Facility, Raises More Than $400,000 at AIDS Walk Washington

The Washington, D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Clinic on Friday shut down its Takoma Park, Md., facility because of budget constraints, the Washington Post reports (Sheridan, Washington Post, 10/2). WWC -- which serves about 7,000 HIV-positive individuals in the district area and has a $29 million budget for 2005 -- in May approved $2.5 million in cuts and announced it would permanently end services in the Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs. However, the Virginia Department of Health, the city of Alexandria, Va., and Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia have pledged to provide as much as $590,000 to WWC to keep its Northern Virginia clinic operating until the end of 2006. WWC Interim Executive Director Roberta Geidner-Antoniotti said a series of budget and funding problems had contributed to the organization's financial problems, including more than $700,000 in late reimbursements owed to the clinic by the District of Columbia Department of Health and the housing agency of Prince George's County, Md. (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 8/26). Geidner-Antoniotti at the clinic's 19th annual AIDS Walk Washington fundraiser on Saturday said that government grants will allow many patients from the Takoma Park clinic to continue treatment at WWC's facilities in the district, with the help of government grants. According to walk organizers, at least 3,300 people raised more than $400,000 in cash and pledges, which Geidner-Antoniotti said is about the same amount raised by the event last year (Washington Post, 10/2).