Home >
News
We Must Never Forget and Never Relent in Our Fight Against AIDS
December 01, 2008
World Aids Day is a day to bear witness, to celebrate the
progress we have made and to re-dedicate ourselves to the fight by telling our
own personal stories. When experiences
are shared from every corner of the globe, we remind the world of the urgency
to act, and we renew our faith in the belief that one day soon we will
eradicate the AIDS pandemic.
I witnessed the first outbreak of the AIDS pandemic in the
1980s in Africa. As a physician and psychiatrist in the U.S.
State Department, I traveled across the African continent serving U.S. missions
and working with local leaders. At the
time the AIDS virus was largely unknown and mysterious, and it spread with
stunning and devastating ferocity from country to country, killing
millions.
One couldn’t help but feel a sense of helplessness, but many
of us resolved to fight this scourge from whatever vantage point we
occupied. For me, that was the U.S.
House of Representatives, which I entered in 1989. At the urging of then-Speaker Thomas S.
Foley, I co-founded a congressional caucus on HIV/AIDS. It gave America a platform in which to
educate and organize Congress against the threat.
Congressional colleagues representing every political
viewpoint across America spoke with one passionate and determined voice to ensure that we would lead,
not merely respond to this global crisis.
And we have. Led by the United States,
the world has gained ground against AIDS, inch by inch, but inextricably
forward.
In 2003, an estimated 50,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa
were receiving antiretroviral treatments to fight AIDS through various
programs. Then, the U.S. launched PEPFAR, the President’s
Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, to urgently concentrate our efforts and it has
been a tremendous success. Today in
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1.7 million people are being treated, and we have provided
care for almost seven million worldwide.
What’s more, our commitment remains strong. A few months
ago, Congress passed and the President signed into law a PEPFAR
re-authorization bill that takes major steps forward. It includes provisions I co-authored to
strengthen our efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and to
significantly increase the number of infected children who will receive
treatment. Every day, 1,000 children are
born into world infected with AIDS, and we believe this new legislation will cut
that number in half.
Still, many of us are concerned. We fear the global economic crisis will
jeopardize the life-saving success. Last
year, the World Bank warned that poverty is much greater than previously estimated:
1.4 billion people worldwide live on about a dollar a day. And this alarm was sounded largely before the
current economic crisis had unfolded. We
have to address global poverty as part of our commitment to eradicate
AIDS.
Furthermore, we know that the developed world is enticing
trained personnel to relocate to meet our medical needs, but this leaves
fragile and vulnerable developing countries dramatically short of healthcare
professionals. Unless we address this
shortage globally, we will undermine on one hand the very health and humanitarian
efforts we support on the other hand.
There is no easy solution to the AIDS crisis, but there is a
path to hope and those who have walked it, as I have, know that awareness
unites the world. We all hope for the
day when medical research discovers an AIDS vaccine and it will come. Until then, we must never forget that we honor
those who have died by fighting for those who are alive and for those yet to be
born. In the final analysis, the shield
that can protect us is our humanity that unites us.
|