BOSTON (AP) – Enrollment in the life-prolonging HIV Drug Assistance Program has climbed by more than 70 percent in the past year, prompting public health officials to seek $4.2 million from the state Legislature to sustain the drug plan.

Spending has grown from about $1 million a month to more than $1.4 million as of March, officials said, and if the trend continues, the drug plan will face a $6.6 million deficit for the budget year that starts July 1.

State Commissioner of Public Health Christine C. Ferguson, in a letter to state Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge and chairman of the Joint Committee on Health Care, said that if the HIV drug plan’s deficit is not eliminated through additional funding, it could prompt “radical restrictions, including wait lists and reduced drug benefits. These options risk serious health outcomes, including death, and will have an effect on the overall transmission rates of HIV in the Commonwealth.”

Brian Cournoyer, an aide to Moore, told The Boston Globe that the senator intended to file an amendment to the Senate budget for a $4 million boost in funding for the HIV program.

Last year, the Legislature tightened the rules for HIV patients to qualify for medical coverage under the MassHealth plan and, as a result, patients have been shifting off that program and onto the HIV Drug Assistance Program.

The number enrolled in the MassHealth HIV program dropped from 625 last August to 490 in April.

The HIV drug plan began in 1987, and is designed to provide coverage to patients who don’t have insurance, or whose health-care policies do not provide enough coverage.

Although the state runs the program, Massachusetts is receiving $15 million this year from the federal government, and that amount is expected to grow marginally in the next budget year, the Globe said.

For some HIV patients, the program covers the full cost of medications, which can exceed $15,000 a year because of drug cocktails that combine three or more expensive drugs. State projections show that enrollment in the plan will increase from about 3,200 now to 4,000 by the end of the next budget year, with the number of patients receiving the full-pay benefit growing from about 800 to 1,000.

“We are very concerned about this sudden and dramatic increase in utilization,” said Julie Marston, executive director of Community Research Initiative of New England, the private agency that administers the drug plan for the state. “The reason that we’re so worried about this is because we’ve already exhausted all ways of maximizing efficiency in this program.”

AP-ES-05-14-04 0213EDT