Posted on 01/29/2003 7:57:13 AM PST by TLBSHOW
Bush Asks for $15 Billion to Fight AIDS in Africa
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, under fire from AIDS groups for what they call his neglect of the epidemic, asked Congress Tuesday to triple AIDS spending in Africa and Haiti to $15 billion over five years.
The announcement, made in his annual State of the Union Address, took AIDS campaigners by surprise, but they quickly both welcomed the plan and expressed skepticism about it.
"I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean," Bush said.
"This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS and for children orphaned by AIDS," Bush added.
On its Internet web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov, the White House said the plan would target Botswana, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
It said the plan calls for the United States to work with private groups and governments to "put in place a comprehensive plan for diagnosing, preventing and treating AIDS."
Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, welcomed what he called "the first dramatic signal from the U.S. administration that it is now ready to confront the pandemic and to save or prolong millions of lives."
"It opens the floodgates of hope. Most importantly, it issues a challenge to every other member of the G7 to follow suit," he said in South Africa after a tour of the region.
The Physicians for Human Rights, which campaigns on a range of issues from land mines to HIV, last week urged Bush to increase global AIDS spending to $3.5 billion a year.
"This is totally unexpected," John Heffernan, a spokesman for the group, said in a telephone interview. "We applaud it. It really is an extraordinary commitment that clearly shows that the United States is serious about combating AIDS."
The Global AIDS Alliance welcomed the news but worried that the Bush administration could be competing with existing AIDS funds, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The United States has been accused of not putting its fair share into the Fund.
"In the (White House) fact sheet it said only $1 billion of the 10 billion in new money will go to the Global Fund," said Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of the Global AIDS Alliance. "We are very concerned that will leave the fund vastly underfunded and undermine its success."
A SLOW START?
Zeitz also said it looked like the program would start out slowly, with just $2 billion allocated for next year.
The International Association for Physicians in AIDS Care said it would closely watch what would be done with the money, if Congress approved it. "The devil is in the details," said Scott Wolfe, a spokesman for the group. But he also strongly welcomed the move, adding, "We call on other global leaders to step up and demonstrate similar commitments."
More than 36 million people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS -- 25 million in Africa alone. The United Nations predicts AIDS will kill 70 million people in the next 20 years unless rich nations step up efforts.
Bush noted this. "There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection," he said. "More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims -- only 50,000 -- are receiving the medicine they need."
There is no cure for AIDS but a cocktail of expensive drugs known as anti-retrovirals can keep disease at bay. Campaigners have been angered that such drugs are available in rich nations but not to the countries hardest hit by the epidemic.
"AIDS can be prevented," Bush said. "Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many years. And the cost of those drugs has dropped from $12,000 a year to under $300 a year, which places a tremendous possibility within our grasp."
The new Senate majority leader, Tennessee Republican Bill Frist, nodded and smiled as Bush spoke. Frist, a medical doctor, does frequent volunteer work in Africa.
"It's unprecedented. It is huge. And of everything he said tonight, it has the capacity to save more lives in this country I would say, but also globally, than anything else said," Frist told CNN.
It probably keeps you from acting out in other ways and saves the taxpayers from paying for your institutional care.
True, at least for homosexuals and sexual deviants. The majority of the "straight" population has it figured out. As far as I'm concerned AIDS follows the Darwinian logic. It will work its way out of the bloodstream by virtue of destroying those who do not practice sex in a safe fashion (protection, monogamy, etc.).
I don't recall EVER seeing a statistic that showed straight men or women at greater risk of contracting AIDS today than they were when the education of America was rolled out to the masses. It seems like all of the BAD reports I hear are for promiscuous and homosexual practitioners. Does anyone have any support one way or the other? I'd be curious to see what someone has on record.
The attack on the African AIDS pandemic is not only a moral and ethical prerogative of God-given humanity, it is a campaign of American national security interest on a multitude of levels. The states of Africa, like all those mired in third world misery and political corruption, need to be viewed as petrie dishes for anti-American terrorist staging going forward. That threat needs to be neutralized by a localized American presence of morally positive and economically fulfilling infulence. There's no more bunker-monkey isolationism post 9-11, but the embittered-populists and LP narcissists here will never understand that reality or undertake that vital responsibility.
With one so clueless as you are, T, there is no point wasting the finger energy to explain. But suffice to say that God's law trumps anything man has ever done or will ever do. Start there before you even attempt to get to Square 2.
Amen , Uncle Bob ! I think Chads been Had
on this topic, along with a few others here !
.....THUNDER......
Bush is, after all, a conservative, and Clinton was a leftist. Right?
This whole AIDS aid thing is a "pearls before swine" situation if there ever was one.
I agree.
His mercy and love is boundless and we can be but a poor imitation. Undoubtedly, the concept cannot penetrate your selfishness, but most decent people are humbled by the words, "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
Thank you. Bush and his staff are remarkably deft in their initiatives. The AIDS program is a vehicle that is not only righteous morally, but will open an avenue into third world countries that can effectively break the resource-distribution hold that existing corrupt and criminal syndicates and institutions - the UN, World Bank and IMF to name a few - have built since WWII. The Mentoring program of at risk kids bypasses the systems, unions and people that fund and operate the diseased and fraud-ravaged education system corrupted by the American left.
It is far superior to pay $40 billion to fund a DOE appropriation initiative that serves to empower parents, move money and decision making power to States and localities, and direct the design and construction of a more innovative, effective and locally managed K-12 franchise than it is to spend $30 billion to enable a socialist, special interest seized, result-poor and fraud ridden status quo.
The AIDS initiative is a strategic security foray - a diseased ravaged populace can never pursue liberty and economic growth, and can never depose the corrupt leaders who are conspiring to kill America and Americans.
America's huge investment in the Marshall Plan, with it's accompanying pricetag, has kept a relative peace on the European Continent for nearly 60 years - a remarkable historic feat. Our efforts around the world keep AMERICANS safe, provide the security of our commercial activity and international trade, elicited foreign investment in OUR markets and businesses, and provided the platform from which America grew to the political, moral and economic wonder it has.
The myopic and craven world of Pat Buchanan - has never, does not now, and will never - exist. The blessings of America mandates concurrent obligations and responsibilities, and the pursuit of policies and investments that cultivate a milieu of physically secure, politically stable and economically engaged Nation States is indispensible to how we Americans, going forward, will live freely, safely, prosperously and in God's service. There's no other path.
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