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Fund the Global Fund
Fund the Global Fund
by Glen Elder
The HIV/AIDS emergency is fast becoming the worst health catastrophe in human history. Already, 25 million people have died from HIV/AIDS. The passage of Global HIV/AIDS legislation by Congress creates the opportunity for our nation to show dramatic leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Although the new law allows Congress to spend $3 billion next year to fight HIV/ AIDS, the decision of how much to actually spend will be decided in the coming weeks by the appropriators in the Congress. In the next few weeks, Senator Leahy is in a tremendous position to make a difference in the lives of millions of people suffering from HIV/AIDS around the world.
Around the world, more than 42 million people are now infected with the virus that causes HIV/AIDS. By the end of this decade, the expected the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS will rise to 80 million and there will be 20 million orphans facing a bleak future because their parents lost the battle against HIV/AIDS. Half of all infections are now occurring among young people. Half a million newborns will be infected this year with HIV by their mothers during childbirth or nursing. That’s 1,400 babies a day, despite the fact that a couple of doses of medicine that would cost us less than a Sunday newspaper can protect most of those babies.
The projections are that there will be 40 million AIDS orphans by 2010, children left without the resources to live and extremely vulnerable to exploitation. For as little as a dollar a day we could provide life-saving treatment to keep their parents alive.
We now know that HIV/AIDS can be beaten. The HIV rate in Uganda was reduced from 15 percent in 1990 to approximately 5 percent according to UNAIDS. Today, we also have effective mechanisms to build on the success in Uganda because of the creation of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.
We should also remember that the HIV virus, of course, is still very much at home here in Burlington, Chittenden County, the State, and the Nation. HIV still threatens the GLBTQA community, and recent spikes in sexually transmitted diseases leave us to conclude that some safer sex messages are getting lost. A profoundly conservative and moralistic turn in national sexual politics has also presented real challenges to those involved in HIV-prevention work. Federal funding guidelines, for example, forced the sexy safer-sex poster campaign launched by Vermont CARES (in this issue) to temper its sex-positive message with “oxymoronic” abstinence wording.
As Vermonters we can be proud of the creative and ongoing responses to the HIV virus that have come from our State. Organizations like Vermont CARES have become national models. Senator Jeffords co-authored the Ryan White Care Act, which helps people living with HIV to access life-saving medications and provides financial assistance for over-the-counter drugs to counteract the toxic side effects. Through the Ryan White Act we have been able to provide respite care for Vermont families affected by HIV and AIDS.
However, the HIV/AIDS crisis and our concern for its effects on people and their lives should not end at the borders of our State. Vermonters can effectively make a difference in the lives of millions throughout the world. And here is how:
The Global Fund, chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, is scaling up successful programs and leveraging our allies to do their fair share in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Grants approved by the Global Fund are putting half a million people with HIV/AIDS on life-saving drugs – a six-fold increase in the number of people in Africa receiving these drugs.
Senator Leahy is a ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee. He has worked hard to combat HIV/AIDS in the past and we call on his strong leadership again to confront this clear and present danger. In the coming weeks his subcommittee will write the check and decide how much to spend in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Now, with the new momentum of the Global HIV/AIDS legislation, he is in a unique position to dramatically increase our nation’s commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS and saving lives. If he is unable to convince his fellow committee members, he should take whatever legislative means necessary to increase the Foreign Operations budget, even if it means returning to the floor of the Senate.
We recently discovered that the President got some things wrong in his State of the Union address but he got it right when he said of the HIV/AIDS emergency that “seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many.” Now we have to put the money behind our conviction and seize this historic opportunity. We must make sure that President Bush is held accountable for these statements. His current proposed budget falls far short of what he promised on his travel through Africa. If the US does not provide adequate and promised funding for initiatives like the Global Fund, the US’s international reputation is further tarnished: we are left to conclude that the President’s actions at best will delay much needed help or at worst are a cynical attempt to only appear compassionate at the expense of the world’s poor, sick and dying.
Please write take time to write to or call Senator Leahy’s office and tell him that Vermonters support his efforts and want to make a difference; that he should vote to fully fund the $3 billion for Global HIV/AIDS next year, including the full $1 billion for the important work of the Global Fund.
Glen Elder, Ph.D., is the Board Chair for Vermont CARES, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Vermont, and author of a recent book about HIV/AIDS in South Africa: Hostels, Sex, and the Apartheid Legacy (Ohio University Press).