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Pres. Bush proposes five-year, $30 billion HIV/AIDS plan
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| President George W. Bush holds Baron Mosima Loyiso Tantoh in the Rose Garden of the White House Wednesday, May 30, 2007, after delivering a statement on PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. With them are the boy's mother, Kunene Tantoh, representing Mothers to Mothers, which provides treatment and support services for HIV-positive mothers in South Africa, and Dr. Jean "Bill" Pape, internationally recognized for his work with infectious diseases. White House photo by Chris Greenberg | President Bush is calling on Congress to provide an additional $30 billion toward fighting the global AIDS crisis. This proposed increase in the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) would offer lifesaving treatment to 2.5 million people – about 1.4 million more than PEPFAR now serves, according to a story originally appearing in The Washington Post. (Read Rick and Kay Warren's statement regarding President Bush's proposed increase for PEPFAR >>)
The original five-year mandate for PEPFAR provided $15 billion in U.S. funding, and it will expire in September 2008. The president’s new proposal would extend that five more years.
Bush issued the request to Congress May 30 in the Rose Garden of the White House, where he was joined both by those who have supported and by those who have benefited from PEPFAR, including a caregiver and an AIDS patient. The president also announced that first lady Laura Bush will travel to Zambia, Mali, Mozambique, and Senegal in late June to visit AIDS-related services funded by PEPFAR.
Bush originally announced plans for PEPFAR, the largest foreign-aid effort directed at a single disease in U.S. history, in his 2003 State of the Union address. Through September 2006, it was providing anti-retroviral treatment for 822,000 people in its focus countries – 12 African nations, plus Guyana, Haiti, and Vietnam.
The program also pays for drugs for 165,000 people elsewhere in the developing world, and it has provided medicine to more than 500,000 pregnant women – a strategy that has kept about 100,000 newborns free of HIV, PEPFAR officials say.
In 2007, an independent panel of experts assembled by the Institute of Medicine called PEPFAR "well positioned" to help control epidemics in AIDS-devastated countries.
Adapted from The Washington Post.
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