Please Endorse a proposal for a White House global AIDS initiative
[Please forward this to any and all of your advocacy networks.
Send organizational sign-on's to: pdavis@healthgap.org]
Oct 21, 2002
Dear colleague worldwide in the struggle to end AIDS, US President George Bush plans to make his first visit to Africa at the end of January. He will not go empty handed, but a fear is that Bush will propose only a modest new AIDS initiative without new money to fund it.
A broad cross-section of NGOs has begun work inside and outside of the White House to influence and generate support for a bold AIDS initiative Africa journey.
Humankind faces as many as 100 million infections before the decade has ended. Continents are being exterminated by treatable illnesses, and a lack
of leadership and funding can no longer be accepted. Please join the undersigned groups and implore President Bush to use the political moment of his journey to Africa to lead a global initiative to control AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Please endorse the simple statement below. Advocates are taking these statements to meetings with Administration officials _this_ week, so please sign on as soon as your organization can. Please send organizational
sign-on's to pdavis@healthgap.org [thanks]
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SAVING FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES
A Proposal for a US Presidential Global AIDS Initiative
US Presidential leadership is critical to galvanizing concerted global action to address the AIDS crisis. President George W. Bush has taken initial steps to expand US leadership in this critical area. To build on these positive steps, the undersigned organizations appeal to President Bush to use the occasion of his upcoming trip to Africa to propose a new US
Presidential AIDS Initiative, taking leadership in a new, global initiative to control the scourge of AIDS, as well as tuberculosis and malaria.
This AIDS initiative must consist of new monies and policies that complement existing US-supported programs and are additional to the Millennium Challenge Account. The Initiative should consist of the following essential
elements (see below, plus see attached Appendix for a longer and more detailed description).
GOAL: A comprehensive initiative to save families and communities affected by the AIDS crisis, extend the parent-child relationship and secure the future of young people.
ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS:
I. Ensuring Access to Affordable Medication:
-- a commitment to funding and implementing, by 2005, an equitable percentage of the World Health Organization's plan to provide anti-retroviral therapies to 3 million people in need of such treatment.
-- support for a limited exception to international patent rules (and in future trade negotiations) to allow the export of a broad range of affordable generic medications to poor countries where such factors as lack of production capacity and insufficient market size inhibit efficient local manufacture.
II. Ensuring Prevention Services and Support for Affected Communities:
-- provision of medication to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child, as well as treatment to sustain and enhance the quality of life for mothers with AIDS, with a commitment to an appropriate US share of the goal of achieving by 2005, and sustaining thereafter, 80% coverage of the estimated 2 million women with HIV who give birth each year globally
-- a sustained, fair-share US contribution to support an annual global investment in comprehensive HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries that increases from approximately $1.2 billion today to $4.8 billion in 2004, as called for by UNAIDS and supported by Global HIV Prevention Working Group. Such efforts should include effective economic, social, and public health strategies aimed at women and girls.
-- support on a global basis for community based care and support services to reach by 2005 80% of children orphaned or left vulnerable by the AIDS
pandemic, in accordance with, at a minimum, the UNGASS goals for orphaned and vulnerable children.
III. Ensuring Adequate Financial Resources:
-- inclusion in the FY04 Budget request of a provision for $2.5 billion for implementation of global AIDS programs, as well as additional funds to fight TB and Malaria. We urge at least 50% of funds for global AIDS programs be allocated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
-- insistence on comprehensive debt cancellation for impoverished nations facing an HIV/AIDS crisis, with support for locally-determined processes to ensure resulting savings are re-channeled to social needs, and so that no such country should spend more than a maximum of 5% of total government revenues from internal sources on debt payments or future loans.
Signed,
Africa Action
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP)Philadelphia
AIDS Foundation of Chicago
AIDSETI - AIDS Empowerment & Treatment International Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) Church World Service
Episcopal Church
Florida AIDS Action
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC)
Global AIDS Alliance
Health GAP
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) Â USA
National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
National Minority AIDS Council - NMAC
OXFAM America
Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation
Physicians for Human Rights
Project Inform
San Francisco AIDS Foundation
Student Global AIDS Campaign
Title II Community AIDS National Network
United Methodist Church - Board of Church and Society
Washington Office on Africa
Paul Davis
Health GAP
ACT UP Philadelphia
e: pdavis@healthgap.org
t: +1 215.833.4102 (mobile)
f: +1 215.474.4793
w: www.healthgap.org