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| Thursday, October 14, 2004 |
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Overview of the President's AIDS initiatives
It is estimated that AIDS has killed 22 million people globally since it first appeared 20 years ago. Each year, over five million people are infected, and there are over 15,000 new HIV infections every day. The developing world has been hit particularly hard, as nearly 95 percent of new infections occur in developing countries. Globally, there are currently over 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS, and this terrible epidemic will only worsen if action is not taken immediately.
The United States is committed to leading the fight against this global scourge of HIV/AIDS. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush announced the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a five-year, $15 billion initiative to turn the tide in combating the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. This commitment of resources will help the most afflicted countries in Africa and the Caribbean wage and win the war against HIV/AIDS, extending and saving lives. Specifically, the initiative is intended to:
- Prevent 7 million new infections
- Treat 2 million HIV-infected people
- Care for 10 million HIV-infected individuals and AIDS orphans
In addition, President Bush in 2002 announced a new $500 million Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative that seeks to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to infants and to improve health care in Africa and the Caribbean. Through a combination of improving care and drug treatment and building the healthcare delivery capacity, this new effort is expected to reach up to one million women annually and reduce mother to child transmission by forty percent within five years or less in twelve African countries and the Caribbean.
These initiatives are in conjunction with the global effort to establish the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral collaboration of countries, organizations, and individuals working together to eradicate these three diseases from existence. The United States has been instrumental in the establishment of the Global Fund, and President Bush announced the Fund's first pledge in May 2001. In January 2003, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson was elected as the Global Fund Executive Board chairman, and through three rounds of funding thus far, the Global Fund has committed $2.1 billion in grants to 121 different countries.
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