Truvada, is a one-a-day pill has been found to be roughly as effective as condoms  in reducing the risk of contracting HIV. But the high cost of the drug  $8,000 to $14,000 a year is out of many people’s price range, even with insurance.

Tomorrow Supervisor David Campos announced plans to introduce a measure to allocate funds for navigators to educate patients about PrEP, and provide subsidies to San Franciscans who cannot afford the life saving medication,

By making PrEP available to all regardless of income, we could set the tone for the rest of the country in how to effectively eradicate a disease that claimed the lives of so many of our loved ones.”

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, has set off a firestorm in th HIV and gay community claiming that the drug is a “public health disaster in the making.” despite the fact that Truvada is heartily supported by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

Peter Staley, a hero of HIV/AIDS activism and a central figure in How to Survive a Plague summed up Weinstein in a recent interview with Marc Joseph Stern of Slate.com:

“If there’s one thing that every AIDS activist knows it’s that Michael Weinstein is not an AIDS activist. Yes, he’s the CEO of the ‘largest AIDS organization in the country’—based on revenue—but from the get-go, his tactic for building this empire has been taking contrarian positions that assure his placement in almost any article that appears about the latest HIV/AIDS debate.”

Since the beginning of the epidemic until 2010 a total of 28,793 San Francisco residents have been diagnosed with AIDS and  19,341  reported AIDS deaths in the city alone.