Buyers Clubs Assist ACT NOW, MM-1 Research

On April 28, The Healing Alternatives Foundation (THAF, formerly named Healing Alternatives Buyers Club, or HABC) gave a $1500. emergency grant to ACT NOW to help in coordinating the Spring AIDS Actions of 1988. ACT NOW is a national network of ACT UP and similar local organizations throughout the country (including the AIDS Action Pledge in San Francisco).
THAF and a similar New York buyers club, the PWA Health Group, also pledged several thousand dollars to send a
physician to Africa to learn more about MM-1 (see article above), if and when such a trip would be helpful.
These grants were arranged in days, not the weeks or months most funding sources require. They show the potential
of the buyers clubs as a major community resource--able to move quickly at critical times, willing to fund treatment and
advocacy work which mainstream AIDS organizations have ignored.
Buyers clubs are nonprofit self-help groups formed by persons with AIDS to make available health products, such as AL 721 substitutes, which are hard to find or much more expensive from other sources such a health-food stores. They have also become important channels for all kinds of treatment information.
THAF meets every Tuesday evening at 7:30 at the Metropolitan Community Church, 150 Eureka St., San Francisco
(back room, second floor). It's phone number is (415) 626-2316.

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