Obama flayed for cutting Global AIDS programme funding

AIDS activists Tuesday condemned the half billion-dollar cut to global AIDS programs in President Obama’s budget request—just two months after President promised to help usher in the “beginning of the end of AIDS.”

Pointing to worsening drug shortfall in Africa, activists said analysis of the President’s FY2013 budget shows that bilateral HIV programs would be reduced by $546.4 million. While funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria is up by $350 million to keep a commitment made last year, activists said that deep cuts to the PEPFAR program will undermine the President’s promises made on World AIDS Day.

“In Malawi, patients are facing a huge shortfall for anti-retroviral medicines in coming years; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, waiting lists for ARVs have hit over ten thousand HIV+ people; in Zimbabwe, ambitious door-to-door testing programs have identified many people in need of treatment who are now being put on waiting lists for ARVs for lack of financing,” said Asia Russell, Director of International Policy at Health GAP.

While the overall budget for the State Department saw increases in 2013—with $5 billion going to post-war rebuilding and military training in Iraq and Afghanistan, but bilateral (direct-to-country) global AIDS programs are cut. The HIV/AIDS response requires both a strong bilateral and a strong multilateral effort to maximize coordination and effectiveness.

“In December the President promised a bold new effort to reach millions more people
with AIDS programs—ARV treatment, condoms, medical male circumcision, and more—to reverse the AIDS crisis. But today’s budget suggests the President was not serious about this promise. It’s simply not credible to cut a half billion from the US’s bilateral global AIDS program and say you’re doing all you can to end AIDS,” said Matthew Kavanagh, Director of US Advocacy for Health GAP.

“PEPFAR’s bilateral programs, and the President’s new promise of expanded treatment and elimination of mother-to-child transmission, should put us on track to universal access and, in so doing, halt the AIDS crisis—yet with massive budget cuts this simply will not be possible,” she added.

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul in the global AIDS fight is likely to leave both Peter and
Paul dead without access to lifesaving services—services that would have been there if the President were not proposing to cut global AIDS programs,” said Kavanagh.