May 6, 2009

Obama to Broaden, Expand PEPFAR to $51 Billion Over Six Years

President Barack Obama wants to expand former President George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); on Tuesday, he asked Congress to spend $51 billion over the next six years to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria overseas while allocating an additional $12 billion toward other global health concerns, The New York Times reports.

Specifically, his budget proposal requests $7.4 billion in global spending for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in 2010, which is $366 million more than this year.

However, some AIDS advocacy groups disapprove of the Obama administration’s proposed PEPFAR expansion, saying it does not do enough to remedy health systems in developing countries, which have been forced to scale back their budgets due to the global economic crisis.

“They are expanding the mandate, but not expanding the pie,” says Paul Zeitz, MD, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group. “To me, this is a betrayal of trust.”

The White House plans to release a more detailed budget proposal on Thursday, May 7.

Search: Barack Obama, PEPFAR, Global AIDS Alliance, malaria, tuberculosis

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Greg747, Patchogue, NY, 2009-05-07 14:28:49
Gee, I wonder if the Global AIDS Alliance folks are also concerned that Uganda and Burundi are torturing, imprisoning, and killing their Gay citizens? Talk about a betrayal of trust, funding for US AIDS services has been gutted. The trashing of the CARE Act and its bastard child, the Treatment Modernization Act, that is a betrayal of trust. AIDS activists have been hoodwinked into believing that what is good for the medical industry is good for us PWAs. Natch.