In 2003, President Bush announced PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – a five-year, $15 billion plan to address global AIDS. Now, for the first time, PEPFAR is up for reauthorization. We need to ensure the plan expands upon its initial goals of preventing 7 million new infections and treating 2 million people. As a matter of social justice, we must ensure that comprehensive prevention and expansive treatment are part of our country’s global AIDS initiative.

For World AIDS Day, we’re asking leaders in Congress to air out PEPFAR’s dirty laundry — critically examining the plan’s current shortcomings, and improving them during the bill’s reauthorization. We have been working all semester on our prevention campaign to address the problems with PEPFAR’s current prevention programs. Here are some of them, and the alternatives we need: [...]

* Provide at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight to end HIV/AIDS
* Remove the earmark on the money allocated for prevention that says that 1/3 must go towards abstinence only until marriage education
* Create a comprehensive program to address the unique vulnerability of women and youth to HIV
* Fund the US fair share to the Global Fund (GFATM)
* Support health care infrastructure by investing $8 billion for health care workers in sub-Saharan Africa over 5 years
* End the anti-prostitution loyalty oath
* Eliminate the global gag rule
* Lift the federal ban on funding needle exchanges

In order to get Congress to air out its dirty PEPFAR laundry, we are going to send them reminders around World AIDS Day.

Click here to read more, and to find out what you can do to help this World AIDS Day. Via Student Global AIDS Campaign.

Oh, and add your Jane Hancock to this petition, via CARE.

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Tagged: action alerts world aids day aids sex ed abstinence only education george w. bush godbags PEPFAR holidays observances red ribbon flickr photos SGAC Student Global AIDS Campaign

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under action alerts, holidays & observances. 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.