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Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left, is hugged by United Nations AIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe during an event in recognition of World AIDS Day at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 29.
The United States announced an ambitious new push to fight the AIDS virus by providing treatment to more people, especially vulnerable women and children.
The new U.S. plan – immediately welcomed by AIDS researchers and advocates -- also promises to target drug addicts, gay men, prostitutes and other sex workers who are at especially high risk, despite reluctance and stigma.
“We are committing to rapidly scaling up the most effective interventions and treatment,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a news conference.
She released new numbers showing that PEPFAR, the U.S. plan for AIDS relief, had provided AIDS drugs to more than 5 million people.
The goal is to treat as many people as possible, both to keep them well and to help keep them from infecting others. Several studies have demonstrated that people who take AIDS drugs are far less likely to pass along the virus.
“Eventually we will be able to treat more people than become infected every year,” Clinton said. “That will be the tipping point. We then will get ahead of the pandemic and an AIDS-free generation will be in sight.”
The announcement sets the U.S. firmly on the path of providing drugs overseas -- an approach that was controversial only a few years ago, when many politicians wanted to focus on promoting prevention, often through restraining sexual practices but also by distributing condoms.
“For us working in the field, this is great news,” said AIDS expert Dr. Michael Saag of the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“With all the discussion about the fiscal cliff, it always becomes a concern that they are going to start cutting programs like this that are lifesaving.” Congress has until the end of December to stop an automatic budget-cutting process that will force severe budget cuts that most experts fear would push the United States back into recession.
“As HIV clinicians and researchers, the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Center for Global Health Policy believe the result of that commitment can be a lasting triumph over the longest and most costly epidemic in human history,” Saag’s group said in a separate statement.
“We are especially encouraged that the blueprint provides concrete numbers in affected countries to illustrate the work that must be done to reach a tipping point, when the numbers of people becoming infected with HIV are surpassed by the numbers receiving life-saving medicine,” said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, co-chair of the Center for Global Health Policies Scientific Advisory Committee.
Other AIDS researchers gushed over the plan, even though it did not dedicate any money to achieving its goals. “In a sense, it is quite inspiring,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, a longtime AIDS researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an IDSA spokesman.
He said while former president George W. Bush’s launching of PEPFAR in 2003 was a big move, the Obama administration’s new approach broadens the goals. “Hillary Clinton herself has undertaken this,” Cohen told NBC News. “That lends a gravitas.”
The new PEPFAR plan has five goals:
- Make strategic, scientifically sound investments to rapidly scale up core HIV prevention, treatment and care interventions and maximize impact.
- Work with partner countries, donor nations, civil society, people living with HIV, faith-based organizations, the private sector, foundations and multilateral institutions to effectively mobilize, coordinate and efficiently utilize resources to expand high-impact strategies, saving more lives sooner.
- Focus on women and girls to increase gender equality in HIV services.
- End stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV and key populations, improving their access to, and uptake of, comprehensive HIV services.
- Set benchmarks for outcomes and programmatic efficiencies through regularly assessed planning and reporting processes to ensure goals are being met.
In addition, Clinton said, the U.S. will pressure countries getting aid to do more. “Partner countries must step up,” she said. They’ll be asked to define what sevrices they need the most, and reach out to get more funding on their own.
Cohen said he was impressed the the administration has made a point of relying on science. AIDS research has been stymied in the past by politics, including squabbles about whether AIDS is really caused by the human immunodeficiency virus – South Africa resisted treating HIV patients for years because of that quarrel.
Bush administration policy limited funding for clinics that even addressed the possibility of abortion, but Clinton said the new PEPFAR policy would push countries to integrate HIV treatment into women’s health clinics, reproductive health services and programs to fight violence against women.
“It is science that has brought us to this point. It is science that will allow us to finish this job,” Clinton said.
The AIDS virus has killed 25 million people and newly infects a million people every year. There is no cure or vaccine, but a cocktail of drugs can keep patients healthy.
The United States spends more on AIDS than any other country, having spent $37 billion in direct international funding and $7 billion in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
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How about keeping that money at home. Think of Medicaid. There are people in America that need help.
We've been more concerned with buying goodwill from other nations than taking care of our own for quite a long time now.
This is a world wide epidemic. Helping the whole world IS helping us.
This is absurd. We have people in this country who can not afford medical care and yet we are using scarce health care dollars to buy medicine for other countries. Does anyone else see the absurdity in this. Why are we borrowing money only to give it away to another country. I could understand foreign aid if we were able to take care of all of our own needs and had extra, but to spend borrowed money on health care for other countries is completely absurd!!!
The government shouldn't be involved with healthcare at home or abroad. Our national debt is over $16.3 trillion, what don't you people understand about that?
especially for a largely self inflicted disease.
I mean no disrespect to anyone out there who is HIV positive. Ive taken risks in my life that could have easily put me in the same position. I understand that there are some people out there that have no idea how they got it. My point is this is not the bubonic plague. There are plenty of precautions one can take to avoid it.
Do you say that about people who get the flu? Or a cold? Or west nile? All of those also have precautions.
But unless you get you and your partner tested before you have sex with anyone, you're at risk. The problem is that people just don't think it will happen to them.
United States of America taxpayer to Secretary "Modern Day Progressive" Clinton:
Get it ?
Are you tired or did you get enough sleep after Ambassador Rice went on National T.V. ????
God. Babies are born with AIDS. Wives get it from husbands, husbands get it from wives. Youths, young adults, & older adults get it innocently. Blood transfusions & other health care procedures transfer it. AIDS/HIV is a global problem, and today's movement of international travellers & businesspeople will keep injecting it into the US. How much money was spent in the Iraq war, in the Afghanistan war? How much money was wasted in the Iraq war through government contractors, how much was wasted in the Afghanistan war? Compare the cost of a single fighter plane, a single combat helicopter, to the large number of lives that can be saved with the same amount. Saving people's lives and getting past the "tipping point" in the struggle against a disease is the moral thing to do. Besides, there are various benefits that come back our way. Measures to eliminate & prevent spread are more economically effective than waiting to combat a spreading disease. It's a sad day when people sacrifice compassion.
Northeast. Its not promiscuity that causes AIDS. AIDS doesn't sit there and think "Now... this person has only had sex with 2 people... I'll skip em... but this woman here... she has had sex with 15 people... AIDS ACTIVATE!!!"
It doesn't work that way. It only takes one. Hell it can take less than one! Babies get AIDS. So, what, are you going to tell an 8 year old kid that he should have wrapped up better?
37 billion in HIV/Aids meds sent to other countries while 10,000 Americans with HIV/Aids are on a waiting list for the same meds here and the ones that can afford it are paying 70% markup subsidizing the rest of the world.
We are about to gut healthcare and foodstamps to the poor in this country and the government wants to give it to other countries.
Was AIDS created as another attempt by governments to limit population control like the Syphilis situation that occurred in America?
What other control measures are used to control population growth???
One intangible way is the issuance of the CHILD SUPPORT LAW..
"LET'S INCRIMINATE BROWN PEOPLE FOR HAVING BABIES....""
CHild support Laws are a watered down way to prevent Brown people from having children that they rightfully deserve to have.
The "Social Model in America" is to keep Brown men out of work by not hiring them and allowing for this to be the main reason for incarceration to prevent them from having more children.
the government has already used methods like having secret syphilis programs and providing other disease to this community around the world in order to prevent their population from growing.
Now all of a sudden all of these new diseases are appearing from out of the blue during the height of the Age of Biotechnology.
I know for a fact that this was their intent starting many years ago and we want to know about all of the secret programs going on in this country and abroad that targets controlling the population of brown people in America and Africa.
"CHILD SUPPORT LAWS SHOULD BE ATTACKED WITH VENGEANCE"
Why????
No one should be imprisoned for having children.
Those who are being targeted never had a say in this situation and never signed into a contract to behave in the way that this law is written.
This is now a $500 Billion dollar industry that prays on BLACK & HISPANIC MEN in AMERICA and seeks to turn them into criminals although they do all in their power to be good dads.
We will peeellll away at layers of this law until it is based on individual situations that does not look to incriminate men for doing and being what is natural.
DADS....
As far as the population control programs that are still in play we will hunt you down and have our revenge on those who seek to cause harm to innocent civilians through use of placing bio engineered diseases within various populations.
This will occur in this life or my next, mark my word!!!!!
PEEL LAYER...
Why do African countries seek to reject any assistance from countries wanting to feed their populations
bio engineered foods????
Because of the reasons listed above......
PEEEL LAYER....
@ Mandy
You are right. As i stated above, I've done things that have put me at risk before and thank God I haven't contracted anything. But the fact is the vast majority of the people who are HIV positive got it from their own actions. (Unless they are born with it... poor kids)
NOT from someone coughing next to them or a mosquito bite.
This is just one more "giveaway" we cannot afford. Sorry, but its time for other countries to take care of these people - not US. I can't believe the democrates continue to raise our taxes for things like this. Something needs to change and change NOW.
I hardly think that $37 billion in the life of the US AIDS fight is breaking the bank in comparison to many other things. Especially since eliminating aids in other countries helps the USA as well.
That is 37 billion that could be used on our own people versers the world. Sorry, but I am sick and tired of my taxes going to countries that should take care of themselves and if they can't then maybe the United Nations should. Aids will never be irradicated due to the uneducated people that continue to have sex just because they want to act like animals. I am also tired of paying for the 47% of lazy ass people here in the these United States too.
Why sure "Dick", we shouldn't have been involved in eradicating Smallpox and Polio. We almost had measles licked, but idiots stopped vaccinating their kids because of a single (since retracted) report claiming it might cause autism.
Just let the rest of the world keep reinfecting us because we'd rather fight the same problem over and over in a nickel and dime manner instead of fixing it once and for all.
And you think that will save us money.
Oh yea... cuz that's totally how it happens.
Its not eliminating it. If this was an actual cure I would gladly support it. We are telling Americans they have to make more sacrifices while throwing money at every other country. Americans first.
Even without being a total cure, the meds are getting the epidemic under control. Some meds do reduce the likelihood of transmission. Earning a little appreciation among the peoples of Africa & other countries is not such a bad idea for long-term global stability & economic progress. I suspect that wider usage of meds worldwide will tend to reduce prices for Americans too.
Liberals say, stop aids. Rightwing nuts say, let them die.
That's why President Bush started the program. Yep, he wanted them to die. Go figure a right wing nut and all.
No, wow, George & Laura Bush wanted to do a good thing, and they did. It's one thing from his administration that the world can be thankful for.
Too bad that it should have been way back when Reagan was president.
If you have it don't have sex. No money needed.
Many people don't know they have it, especially in poor countries.
You would have better luck repealing the law of gravity.
.
Sexual intimacy is not the only mode of transfer. Besides, not every infected person notifies partner(s). Babies are born with it. It's possible to be a carrier & not know it. Let's live compassionately.
In certain parts of Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is rampant, many believe sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS, so girls of twelve and younger are often raped and being infected.
Would you tell those girls they shouldn't of had "sex?"
The GOPVERNMENT solves no problems, the exaggerate it, and corrupt it with money! the bigger it gets, the more money you get! NO one solves anything when Gov. money is available. Look at the record: poverty-UP, education failure rate-UP, cancer-no cure, on and on! who expects that more US money will help aides? no one, the more money, the more and bigger the problem becomes, the money goes into UN pockets not into solutions. more courrptin, that smile on HIllary's face is that is the closest she has come to sex in a decade or more.
No more government help? Okay, are you ready to pay for your roads, schools, etc. entirely out of your own pocket? Will you also be giving back your Social Security when you retire and not use your Medicaid benefits?
It is being paid out of our pockets - have you heard of taxes.
No more government help? Okay, are you ready to pay for your roads, schools, etc. entirely out of your own pocket? Will you also be giving back your Social Security when you retire and not use your Medicaid benefits?
--------------------------------------
"I", and all the other taxpayers, paid for these things, and look how they are being treated. 'WE' ought to demand a refund.
Yeah, good luck with that! LOL And I hope you have an off road vehicle.
Let's get rid of government and bring back polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, flu epidemics, ... Oh, wait -- besides making the world a safer place for us all, maybe it'd be nice to be compassionate. Hurry, only so many shopping days until Christ-mas -- better hunt for bargains on iPads, big screen TVs, ATVs, golf clubs & skis, diamonds, threads. While out, hit the restaurants & leave half the food to feed the landfills. Feels too good to act like we're affluent. Other folk, regardless of what country they're born in, deserve what they've got, what they've not. I want a drink, a steak, a break, chocolate.
DOCJT,
Judging by the crappy rodes and freeways I have to live with, I'll need one sooner rather than later. I live in California, where gas is refined within miles of my home and pay the highest gas prices in the nation (because of the gas tax) and our roads are full of pot holes, falling apart, patched and degrade to the point they are dangerous because my state IGNORES THEM and uses the tax dollars to fix the roads to balance our budget.
Yes, I'm not exaggerating....I deserve a refund.
Math+Sci+JusticeFuelProsperity,
Our government is already ignoring those diseases when they ignore the ILLEGAL ALIEN problem. As far as compassion goes, we are already far to compassionate to people who don't deserve it. How about they learn to take care of themselves and stop relying of the taxpayers of this nation to give them a life...Gads.
Show me the money first.
I know republicans who also have AIDS DICK 227.and receive federal dollars. Try some compassion without judgement.It's ignorance that spreads disease
how about you and your fellow liberals donate all your money to fight the disease. Im sorry but my republican friends and I are all tapped out from being taxed to death so you liberals can have free cell phones and rent paid and free gas etc etc etc
Ignorance? Oh I get it so you are saying cultures are not created equal? What a shocking thing to hear from Rick. You mean culturally acceptable behavior like Kenyan and Congonese truck drivers visiting prostitutes and spreading the disease is ignorance based? Wow, my eyes have been opened.
Alan this is a health epidemic. Not a cell phone.
What would things be like if we never did anything to stop the spread of things like small pox, polio etc.?
Ignore ignorance?
great, lets just raise he taxes even more.
Our liberal, "one percenter" family does contribute thousands a year towards AIDS research. And I would be willing to bet that we have paid a lot more taxes than you have. Why are you so hateful and angry? Try some compassion....
Thanks!, GretchenJ for your generosity & compassion!
Hillary was never much to look at. But she's getting less and less camera friendly every day.
You queens can be so catty!
That does happen when people age.
Yea, funny how these comments don't happen as much to the men. Gosh, sorry she is getting old and spends almost every waking moment on a plane doing a job that is 20 times harder than yours will ever be.
Northeast, do you say that about your grandma? About your mother? She is 65 for f---s sake.
@ Mandy That's because Bill is still a sexy, sexy man.
Why is this such a wonderful thing for the US? We aren't going to see any benefit for our citizens here for treating someone in SAfrica. Where we would have an immediate impact is if treatment was going on here. The government is stealing from medicare to prop up "affordable care" while giving away boatloads of drugs, materials, knowledge, and specialists to countries that affect us little? Why is this a good thing? I'm getting tired of this pandering by our glorious leaders
What about helping people in the USA? And what about doing something to eradicate cancer?
Nothing good can come out of sticking your dick into someones crap.
So by your reasoning the only way Aids can get passed from a man to a women or vise versa is through sticking his dick in her crap?
Ah, the closed minds in this day and age?
Nothing good can come from "sticking one's dick" into someone's vagina? Oh wait-- true love is a good thing. A joy. A blessing to the world. IMO there's a lot of true love in the world, & I don't want to denigrate ANY of it. Peace on earth & good will to all humanity.
Sssshhhh keep this under your hat, aids is a homosexual created and transmitted disease. Don't educate the homosexuals to clean up their act that would be politically incorrect. Will someone please inform Hilliary Clinton aka Mrs. Claus that the USA is heading straight for the collapse of the dollar. This financial assistance she is alluding to will be more borrowed money. We don't have the money honey please come in for a landing.
How does Homosexuality create a virus? Did Heterosexuality create the common cold virus?
YES, if not, none of this would have been possible .... you kucklehead! ;)
roc1960: Please go outside and find a medium size rock and smash it into your head.If you cannot understand the correlation between homosexuality and AIDS,then you must be one of those stupid idiots who can never understand why a condum helps prevent AIDS.You and people like you are the reason AIDS continues to be a deadly desease.AIDS is the single most preventable desease in the world,if you had a brain.
roc's got a valid point ... blood transfusions, needles from legit medical procedures, hetrosexual w/ bisexual, drug abusers .... it's not homosexual only ... these days you could get in a car accident, go to a hospital, get blood and there you go .... should you wear condoms = yes, should you protect yourself = yes .... some of these countries .... they are out there but I thought that is why we have a UN ....
my point to roc is if we were all homosexual we wouldn't exist therefore the common cold wouldn't exist!
i'm getting a drink ...
So you all are saying a sexual act Created a virus?
People of all stripes, all ages, have HIV.
I would still like to hear a reply on how a sexual act can create a virus.
YES, Hilary is having meetings and promising more aid and monies for aids in other countries, while Obama, Boehner and who are supposed to be talking about how to avoid the cliff. Makes lots of sense.....
Same oh same oh....next we'll see politicians making a decision of what country they will be moving to after they defeat the USA internally...right down the tube....the'll have all that money for their own gotten by smokescreens
Oh, and what will some people do for a hug?
... spend money on treatment .... if she wants to make a push they have to spend the big money on research and I'd like to see the focus on that done here in the US. Whoever finds the cure on this one is going to make some big bucks and I don't want it to be South Korea. The UN should step up to the plate on treatment through country contributions and world-wide donations ....
Goodness! Evita is already running before she resigns her other job.It won't be long before Juan(Bill) starts the campaign for her.I suspect the only time you won't see her,after she resigns,is the time she is all bruised up from her multiple facelifts.Hillary and Bill are the modern day version of Argentina's Perons'They will never go away until one of three things happen.Bill(Juan) is elected president of the world;Hillary(Evita) is elected president of America or they both die.If I live until i'm 99 and they are alive,they will be running forv something."Don't cry for me ,America!"No such thing as going quietly into the past,is there!
Wow! Someone finally got around to watching Evita, 30 years after the rest of the country. LOL
80% of all AIDS infected people are gay males.But she wants to give equal treatment to women.Go ahead! Take away 30% of what women are currently getting and give that money to the colon cowboys who are so stupid,they haven't figured it out.You want not to die and cost everyone else a millions of dollars for your meds and treatments over your worthless life,then wear a condum! So easy but some idiots just don't get it!Why should the rest of the population be responsible for irrational and stupid behavior of some others?How many years and studies do they have to do that show unprotected sexual behavior,you might end up with AIDS.
Your numbers are way off. Closer to 50%. Heterosexual women are quickly catching up, too.
70% of new Aids patients in America are gay men.90% of new Aids patients in Africa are gay males.Europe runs about 65%.I don't know about China because they don't release thsoe figures.I think my estimation is about correct.I believe I read that figure in "The Economist",hardly a right wing rag,a few weeks ago.
Really? Have you EVER in your life had unprotected sex? Do you know the sexual history of all of your partners?
Then YOU are also at risk.
This is not something that affects only homosexuals or whatever it is you want to believe. This is a health epidemic. JUST like measles, JUST like polio. And your attitude towards the people who have it makes NO difference to the fact that it must be treated like any other epidemic.
AIDS should have been named FPD= Fudge Packers Disease
That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Who trolls about an epidemic? Seriously. Millions of people have and are dying and you are scoffing at them. PEOPLE. Just like you.
it is called A.cquired I.mmune D.eficiency S.yndrome mas098 you morally rednecked homophobic. prop 215 is the answer.
Is that what you say to the babies born with AIDS? It doesn't matter who gets it. A homosexual man is still a person. Who are we to judge?
If human cruelty has reached this point, the best thing for this planet would be a cataclysmic event.... perhaps an asteroid.
You passed laws for same sex couples, now you want more money to fight the aids they have been spreading for years, this is stupid. To stop aids just kill off the ones that spread it.
The same for Syphilis, gonorrhea and herpes?
well, we legalize weed in Colorado and Washington and still fund DHLS to stop weed at the border .... I guess more to follow on that but I don't want my tax dollars spent on that if they let WA and CO go for it .... I've been thinking about this one, this is going to come to head soon .... and what if CO and WA start running $$ surplus! The flood gates shall open!
Huh!
Merlin, what about people who catch the flu? Why didn't we just off everyone who got polio?
You don't actually believe that, do you?
Mandy, I think we are wasting our time.....
G O D dam people can be stupid phux, Wipe Washington OFF the map and start OVER with Joe the plumber or any ( COMMON MAN OFF THE STREET) we will see some change ! THANK HEAVENS ROB-ME DIDN'T GET IN ! IF THAT WAS THE CASE ANYONE WITH hiv WOULD BE sol .
Evita has more chins than Chinatown!
More empty rhetoric from another Clinton! Where does the money come from? The Clinton foundation or will they gut Medicaid some more?
Why are we providing health care for those in other countries when so many of our own people can't afford to go to the doctor?
When will you understand that epidemics need to be treated on a global scale? This is not diabetes. Its AIDS.
the best cure for an addiction is a very serious reduction of Hillary Clinton's and our entire government's intrusive power of hands-on force to try futilely to control our lives and proselytize a straight-edge christian society. the best cure for aids is 1996 prop 215(17 years ago) and it passed overwelmingly, anybody remember it? i still do!
AND once again the bigger and more urgent medical problem that the U.S. should have provided medications and treatments to it's citizens for free, Diabetes, which is primarily hereditary, NOT a life style, is thrown out the door by the people who support the people who take no precautions against spreading this life style disease.
Just YESTERDAY this news line reported that the younger gays are getting infected faster than ever and more because they are not taking any precautions against getting HIV.
NOW, I am suppose to stand up and cheer because my tax dollars are going to provide FREE medical for these people.
NO! This is wrong, wrong and wrong. WHEN the U.S. sinks equal amounts of MONEY and TIME into treatments and a cure for people with Diabetes, then that will be something for Clinton and her AIDS and HIV buddies to Cheer about.