When Bush came into office, one of his very first directives was to shut down Clintons’ good will in helping families and people at risk by denying funding to Planned Parenthood Clinics affecting third world countries that needed help the most. Read on to find out about how Bush is patting his own back for his popularity in Africa for increasing his AIDS/HIV package, yet this is another legacy ploy that will catch up to him as he tries to exploit a situation and pretend he has single handedly saved many Africans lives when in reality he has still left many more at risk.
Since the masses of poor have no daily newspaper or press to read, they hear all about the big money from America and think George W. Bush was there to help save them, but what they don’t know was that Bush put tight strings attached to his big money which stopped the flow in some venues. In reality, because of Bush’s high morals there is a condom shortage and closing clinics. His ‘mighty view’ that the Africans must be taught abstinence or get cut off from their funds is ridiculous. Bush tagged on a Global Gag rule at the mention of those hideous words: sex outside marriage, abortion, prostitution, sex trafficking! Bush insists that all unmarried people must not practice sex according to his anal principles. It only shows how deep in the bubble bubble boy lives. He feels that if what he says is not applied, he will just not apply the real money to help. And who suffers? the children, the family, the everyday person making a living! And though Dubya says he will leave Washington with his head held high, his head is really up his ass!
Bush thinks that people should be taught a lesson and if they don’t agree to abstinance, they can just die of HIV and AIDS if they don’t follow the rules! The package itself is also tied to promoting pharamaceutical companies AND with the stipulation that American contractors be able to tap the African electric and water systems, anything lucrative we can take from them via USA government contracts.
Read more below – And be glad that Obama will not be judging the way Bush judges everything to his standards, (which are bogus and elitist and self serving only to him.)
Bush and his bubble go off in 6 days, then we can really help African and other 3rd world parties to finally deal with family planning and more! We must stop the spread of Aids and HIV! We must not let all these childless AIDs/HIV orphans be brought into the world to suffer alone. We must supply the world Planned Parenthood clinics with the real resources needed to help real people and their dilemmas. Hurry Obama, go back to the Clinton era standards where people in need go for real birth control and family counseling, please let this be the era of reality for families and individuals who need our help and not our values pressed upon them. Bush has never walked in another’s shoes one day in his life, his imposition of morality is a nice thought, but once again, just an effort to deny real people’s rights to their own bodies and what is best for them and their situation. Let him go sit in his fancy house with his head up his ass repeating, ” I am great, history will be kind to me, they will remember me as the best president ever and I can hold my head up high once extracted from my ass!”
From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807300936.html
- Treatment: The bill does not set a specific target for the number of people to receive treatment, but instead relies on a “formula” for determining the number of people set to receive treatment, which would fluctuate based on annual appropriations. Without clear targets, it is very difficult to program for the future. In fact, the formula creates an economic incentive against treatment scale-up. This extremely problematic feature of the formula has been confirmed as intentional by Senator Coburn’s staff.
- Funding: Congress authorized spending $48 billion over five years on AIDS, TB and malaria. But the legislation calls for programming that will cost at least $59 billion over five years. House and Senate appropriators need to commit to the major increases in spending required to fulfill the expanded program in the bill.
- Abstinence-only funding: The Hyde/Lantos bill does overturn a previous requirement that 1/3 of prevention funding be directed towards abstinence-only programs. This has been replaced with a “reporting requirement” which mandates that the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator submit a report to Congress if a country with a generalized epidemic spends less than 50% of sexual prevention funding on programs promoting abstinence and faithfulness.
- Health Care Workers: During negotiations, Congress dropped two provisions that would require recipient programs to provide urgently needed health care for health care workers, as well as a provision that would have instructed the US Treasury to oppose the International Monetary Fund’s policies that seek to limit poor country spending on health and education.
· Sex Worker “Loyalty Oath”: The bill does not address a current US policy that requires recipients of US foreign assistance funds to certify that they oppose prostitution. This “pledge” increases stigma for hard to reach populations and can lead to fewer sex workers having access to HIV prevention and treatment programs.· Sexual and Reproductive Health: US policies that limit the ability of recipients to provide family planning services are harmful and must be overturned by a future Congress or President. The bill is silent on integration of family planning programs with AIDS programs. US policies create increased fragmentation on the ground and denying resources to organizations providing family planning services who must choose between providing sexual and reproductive health services and care for AIDS, TB and malaria. Effectively, US policy limits availability of services to sick patients.
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| Wednesday, 21 March 2007 | |
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by Aaron Sussman The Bush administration undermines its vaunted AIDS efforts in Africa by tying aid dollars to contracts for American firms, and barring funds to groups that deal with sex workers – a primary vector of the disease. Such political-religious restrictions have led to the growth of epidemics centered among sex workers, and a critical shortage of condoms in Uganda – a country that was once touted as an AIDS success story but is now on a backward slide. Bush’s Broken AIDS Promise to Africa?by Aaron Sussman “Moralistic provisions within U.S. policy have hampered aid organizations and have cost countless lives.” While most discussion of President George W. Bush’s foreign policy centers around the much maligned invasion of Iraq, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, and the escalating tension with Iran, only slight attention is usually given by the media and the public to this administration’s policies in Africa concerning the HIV/AIDS crisis. Bush, in fact, is responsible for a “dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa,” boosting “direct development and humanitarian aid…to more than $4 billion a year from $1.4 billion in 2001,” thanks to the passage of the AIDS Leadership Act in 2003. Behind these impressive numbers, though, are underlying issues that have outraged some international health and aid organizations, invigorating a debate over how aid should be distributed and what the priorities should be. One of the most controversial clauses in the AIDS Leadership Act states that federal funding is unavailable “to any group or organization that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” Stipulations like this one, which is currently the subject of ongoing litigation, have served to undermine the potential of foreign aid to curb the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa. During his State of the Union address in 2003, Bush proposed the AIDS Leadership Act, claiming that “this comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS and for children orphaned by AIDS.” He touted the success of this five-year, $15 billion initiative in his 2007 State of the Union speech when he said that “the number of people receiving life-saving drugs has grown from 50,000 to more than 800,000 in three short years.” Many are unaware that these efforts were largely spurred by Bush’s “Christian supporters [, who] seldom get the credit they deserve for their role in the global fight against AIDS.” While there has been discernable progress stemming from Bush’s policies, there has also been serious criticism that moralistic provisions within the policy have hampered aid organizations and have cost countless lives. “The emphasis is more on countries that open up their markets so American companies can go in and privatize things like water and electrical service.” The manner in which wealthy countries like the United States contribute foreign aid has drawn disapproval from those saying that the amount is too little and is “primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries or to benefit powerful domestic interest groups.” To serve these interests, there are often strings attached, such as those requiring governments to “open up to trade and foreign investors” and adhere to “enhanced patent protections” that prevent access to affordable medications. According to Nii Akuetteh, the Executive Director of Africa Action, “there are conditions that are attached where the emphasis is more on countries that open up their markets so American companies can go in and privatize things like water and electrical service or have access to certain resources.” Some of the most damaging restrictions, though, are the ones reflecting moral dogma, like the sex worker clause in the AIDS Leadership Act. This clause, however, is not without precedent. Often, a designated percentage of U.S. foreign aid for HIV/AIDS prevention must be dedicated to abstinence programs, even though many experts assert that there are more effective methods. The politicizing of foreign aid in areas of health has its roots in the Mexico City Policy initiated by Ronald Reagan in 1984; the policy prohibited recipients of U.S. international family planning funds from having anything to do with abortion, including mentioning the procedure in counseling. This “global gag rule,” retracted by Clinton but resurrected by Bush, is responsible for the closing of essential health clinics, including five in Kenya, some of which “were the only affordable reproductive health services in the area.” The AIDS Leadership Act follows this example, with devastating effects and questionable legality. Many organizations have condemned the Act, resulting in two ongoing lawsuits “It is essential to involve members of the target high-risk community, such as sex workers, in delivering the message of HIV/AIDS prevention.” DKT International, which receives roughly 16 percent of its budget from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), refused to sign the pledge because it would result in “stigmatizing and alienating many of the people most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS – the sex workers” (DKT International at 4). This concern was echoed by the 25 organizations that signed the ACLU’s friend-of-the-court brief, including such varied voices as the American Foundation for AIDS Research, American Jewish World Service, Physicians for Human Rights, and Dr. Jim Young Kim, Chair of the Harvard Medical School Department of Social Medicine. According to the ACLU, “Many organizations that work to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS often reach out to commercial sex workers to distribute condoms and offer education on safer-sex measures.” This point was emphasized by Chris Beyrer, the director and founder of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health, in a Declaration to the court in Alliance for Open Society International, Inc. v. USAID (Judge’s decision ruling against USAID). Beyrer cites USAID’s own research to support his claims: “Providing sex workers with access to education, condoms, and other prevention tools is very effective in curbing the spread of the disease within this community and the general population (UNAIDS, 2001, 2004). It is essential to involve members of the target high-risk community, such as sex workers, in delivering the message of HIV/AIDS prevention (USAID, 2001).”
Most experts agree with Paul Zeitz of the Global AIDS Alliance, who says that the most rapidly growing HIV/AIDS epidemics “are happening among sex workers in developing countries, yet the Bush administration policy would create an even bigger crisis.” Organizations like DKT International do most of their work in these vulnerable nations, such as Sudan and Ethiopia, which have some of the highest rates of infection. According to Beyrer, groups including the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the World Bank have promoted working with commercial sex workers as an effective strategy to fight the epidemic. Evidence of this effectiveness is clear in nations like Brazil (which has refused to accept $40 million in American aid because of the restrictions) and Thailand; the latter having seen rates of infection in soldiers peak at over 12 percent in 1991, and then fall to under one percent ten years later, due to programs involving outreach to sex workers. Not only have organizations seen success with these tactics, but sex workers have formed their own coalitions to battle the virus. Women in the Indian state of Maharashtra created the organization SANGRAM, “a collective of female sex workers that grew to include thousands of members.” SANGRAM has worked extensively against the spread of HIV, leading to a number of international awards for their positive results. Despite these proven strategies, no organization receiving funding from the AIDS Leadership Act could effectively work with a group like SANGRAM. “The condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by US policies.” The deleterious effects of attaching politically motivated strings to foreign aid are evident. The sex worker pledge in the AIDS Leadership Act could hurt states that were previously on upwards paths, such as Uganda, one of the few African countries that was reducing infection rates, but that has recently deteriorated, partly as a result of U.S. policy. Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, says that American cuts in funding for condoms and a focus on abstinence has contributed to a critical shortage of condoms. According to Lewis, “There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies]. To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.” The fact that this administration, despite these harmful restrictions and the opting for political moralizing over saving lives, has done more for victims of HIV/AIDS in Africa than any previous administration is a testament to how poorly the United States, and other wealthy nations, have done in addressing the problem. That the AIDS Leadership Act rejects the advice of health experts in order to appease those who morally object to prostitution, though, is unconscionable, if not unconstitutional. For true progress to be made against HIV/AIDS and other diseases that plague impoverished populations in Africa and elsewhere, the United States and other nations must cooperate with local coalitions and health experts, even if it is at the expense of economic and political gain. Aaron Sussman is a freelance journalist, activist, and co-founder/Executive Editor of InciteMagazine.org. Sussman is also a radio show host, stand-up comedian, and will soon begin working for a legal advocacy and civil liberties organization in New York City. For more of Sussman’s work, visit ACrowdedFire.com. He can be contacted at |
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It was USAID, in fact, that released valuable information on the ways in which stigma and discrimination “push people in high-risk groups (e.g. sex workers, injecting drug users) underground, making them difficult to reach through prevention programs and thus creating more opportunities for HIV/AIDS to spread to the general population.” Though the political aspects of this debate are highly controversial, there is a near consensus among health experts that the pledge in the AIDS Leadership Act is misguided and harmful.
1 Comment
January 21, 2009 at 10:56 pm
That picture of the baby and vulture is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.