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Stephen Lewis response to Bush AIDS pledge
Republished courtesy of Af-AIDS. 3 February 2003. ([email protected])
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Here we republish the response to President Bush's State of the Union address by Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary-General?’s Special Envoy, HIV/AIDS in Africa:
The announcement by President George Bush last night, to provide $3 billion a year for five years to fight AIDS, primarily in Africa: "I ask Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money", is the first dramatic signal from the US administration that it is now ready to confront the pandemic and to save or prolong millions of lives.
There will inevitably be many questions. If $10 billion dollars is new money, where will the old money be taken from? Since the money will presumably not start to flow until 2004, what kind of emergency supplemental allocation can be found for 2003? What exactly will go into the President?’s next budget proposal? Will Congress agree? Since the money is less than advocates in the AIDS community have been asking for, based on the American share of the world economy, they wanted an absolute minimum of $3.5 billion in 2004, escalating steadily thereafter because of the rising needs in future years - where will the additional money be found? And above all, what share will go to the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria?
But while I think these are vital and crucial questions, on which the lives of millions depend, I do not want to sound begrudging. The President?’s announcement is a significant announcement. It gives leverage to activists everywhere to keep the pressure on. It transforms the response; it opens the floodgates of hope.
Most important, it issues a challenge to every other member of the G7 - the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada - to follow suit. The international financial delinquency that has haunted the response to AIDS in Africa is hardly that of the United States alone; it extends, without exception, to all the wealthy donor nations.
But the G7 carries the moral burden. The next G7 Summit is in France in June. Between now and then, every single member must announce its contribution to the struggle against AIDS overall, and to the Global Fund in particular. The Summit itself should initiate the most far-reaching, imaginative plan of action to confront this communicable scourge that the world has ever seen.
I have two final thoughts. We?’re meeting in South Africa. It compels me to say that the signal given by George Bush last night is a signal which should encourage the Government of South Africa to institute anti-retroviral treatment at the earliest possible moment. The Government has always pleaded dollars. It is now clear that from the world community, the dollars are on the way.
Finally, one cannot read the Presidential address without a sense that war may be imminent. And with the best will in the world, wars have a way of distorting, however unintentionally, every intended human priority. Wars have their own dynamic, in the wake of which hopes can be strangled and dreams can be suffocated.
We cannot allow HIV/AIDS to become collateral damage. |
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