Bush Asks For More AIDS Money
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health Care, Money, The World
Great news in the fight against this deadly scrouge…
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush asked Congress on Wednesday to triple the funding for his international AIDS initiative and extend the program an additional five years.If approved, the move will add $30 billion in funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a five-year initiative which he announced in his State of the Union address in 2003.
“This level of assistance is unprecedented and the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history,” he said Wednesday. “This investment has yielded the best possible return: saved lives.”
The funding request would more than double the number of people who can be treated, to 2.5 million from the 1.1 million currently treated by the program. The program aims to prevent 12 million new infections and care for more than 12 million people already suffering from AIDS.
However, given that abstinence programs have been debunked in this country, I’d like to see the following reconsidered…
PEPFAR has come under some criticism for its requirement that part of the program emphasize abstinence education.Congress requires that at least 33 percent of the money spent on prevention should go to abstinence-until-marriage programs.
Still, it’s overall a very good thing to get more money to Africa for this, so kudos to Bush.
This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 and is filed under Health Care, Money, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I’m very glad to hear this, and I’m happy there’s at least *something* to cheer Bush for. On the other hand, two points of concern:
1. The abstinence only education part means we’re essentially only spending $20 billion on AIDS prevention, with $10 billion being spent on the social conservative right’s quixotic campaign to cure the human sex drive. Actually, maybe it’s even worse than that if you figure the abstinence education takes emphasis away from condom distribution and other effective methods, thus causing net harm. Considering what a scourge AIDS has become in Africa, I wish we could move beyond ideology and just look at what works. Abstinence education falls within that category only in the conservative dream world of theory.
2. How are we going to pay for this? I know that sounds horribly stingy, and let me explain. I’m all in favor of spending money - more money than this, in fact - on dealing with AIDS and helping Africa’s development. But I think we need to be up front about where we’re paying it from. There should be an equal $30 billion tax increase or spending cut; I’d be happy to pay my share, though sadly I suspect Congress and the American public would rather pass the bill on to my generation alone.
That said, in politics you’ll always be disappointed if you compare to the best possible outcome, so I suppose it’s a good start.
June 3rd, 2007 at 2:34 am
abstinence programs don’t work, not only do they not work but the program preaches to the choir. The ideals espoused by the program are largely conservative ones i.e. Republican, Fundamentalist Christian ones. The idea is not new nor is it entirely a partisan issue as you find both Democrats and Rebuplicans that find common ground on this issue. However, it still remains largely a conservative, fundamentalist christian idea.
I am not going to blame Bush only for this issue but the sad truthof the matter is this is too little too late. Millions and millions of people have died due to AIDS in this world, Americas’ pitfully meager “aid” has been too little, too late in coming. My question is this, how long has the AIDS scourge existed? We’ve known about AIDS and its devestating effects for nearly four decades now. Once the evidence was clear that the United States had a serious problem of epedemic proportion on its hands we moved agressively to retard and combat the spread of the disease. No such thing has occured in Africa or other AIDS plagued countries.
Is it America’s responsibilty to police the world and pay for all the suffering that goes on in it? No, I don’t think so. When you consider the world’s 35,000 golf courses use enough water each day to support 4.7 billion people need water and that there are 17,000 golf course in the U.S. alone or that Americans, per head, consume more than twice as much oil as the British, Germans, French and Italians do. Not only do we use more energy (electricity) than other countries but we waste more energy than other countries use in total. USA’s aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP has almost always been lower than any other industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically since 2000, their dollar amount has been the highest. (Only since 2004 have they move up from last place, by just one or two places.) This may all seem unrelated but it’s not, there’s a pattern of failure on the U.S.’s part to recognize and adress serious world problems while at the same time we continue to live our lives as if there are no problems outside of America.
I believe fair trade, not aid is what these countries need. Instead of throwing money at every problem that arises we should help nations help themselves. Unfortunately, helping nations help themselves isn’t as profitable as keeping them under back breaking IMF/World Bank debt. When someone owns your house, your land and everything in it it’s hard to say no.
So, its great and all we are supposedly going to give aid to the multi-decade long human tragedy that we call AIDS in Africa. We’ve promised “aid” before. I seem to remember Clinton making the same kinds of monetary promises that George Bush senior made and now George Bush Jr. is making. Promises are just that, promises. They don’t mean anything unless they are followed through.
Regarding the abstinence programs, yeah, don’t have sex until your married it against Gods and mans plan. Okie Dokey!
“# Aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries;
# Or [aid is primarily designed] to benefit powerful domestic interest groups;
# Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient;
# Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it; and,
# All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries” â€â€? Pekka Hirvonen
October 30th, 2007 at 5:29 am
viet bet…
gamble sitters.sedition interrogation?Malabar.glide …
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:37 am
Micharel…
It would be great help if I could get some clarity on the real issues…