Due to South Carolina Legislature’s tiny contribution to the state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program, more than 350 South Carolina H.I.V. patients remain on the longest waiting list for AIDS drugs in the country.

“There’s only two ways to get off of the wait list right now,” said Karen Bates, one of a group of South Carolina H.I.V. patients who have demanded that the state take emergency action. “One of them is if somebody else dies and you get their slot. The other is if you die.”

The program serves about 1,300 people a month, and patients are eligible for it if they are uninsured and cannot afford the drugs, which cost an average of $885 a month. State officials say it would cost South Carolina $3 million to clear the waiting list. The only other state with such a list right now, Alaska, has 13 people waiting.

North Carolina pays for 40 percent of its AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Georgia pays for 26 percent of its program. South Carolina pays for 3 percent of its program.

Clair Boatwright, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina health department, said the department would request $3 million in supplemental money for the remainder of this fiscal year and a $4.5 million increase in annual financing when the Legislature convened on Jan. 9. Right now, Ms. Boatwright said, the department has no emergency money available to reduce the waiting list and no uncommitted cash to shift to the drug program.

State lawmakers said the paltry contribution to AIDS financing was less because of conscious opposition on the part of Republicans, who controlled the Legislature, and more because there had been no strong push for an increase.

Led by Representative Joseph H. Neal, a group of AIDS activists are rallying together to push AIDS financing onto the legislative agenda and make legislators aware of those like Kiah Graham, 24, who told the Times, “All it’s going to take is one cold, or pneumonia, and it’s over with.” For now, the state has put the majority of wait-listed patients on assistance programs:

State health officials said that all but 10 of the people on the waiting list were now on so-called patient assistance programs, a stop-gap measure in which drug companies provide free medications for a limited time. If a patient needs drugs from more than one manufacturer, an application must be submitted to each, and experts say many do not get all the drugs they need, reducing the effectiveness of those they do get.

The state began training caseworkers to complete the paperwork for the programs last summer when the waiting list started, [South Carolina Health Department H.I.V. Division Director Lynda Kettinger] said, but she could not say how long it took until people began receiving drugs. She also declined to say if the four who died were receiving drugs through such a program.