Bush Administration’s Approach to Domestic, Global HIV/AIDS Undergoing ‘Ominous’ Developments, Opinion Piece Says
The Bush administration's approach to HIV/AIDS has experienced several "ominous" developments recently, both domestically and globally, author Esther Kaplan writes in a Nation opinion piece. Bush has "abandon[ed] the domestic for the international" by creating the $15 billion initiative President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which concentrates on "orphans, abstinence and faith," Kaplan writes. However, the program has "undermine[d]" the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which lost funding from the United States because the Bush administration "prefer[s] its own U.S.-owned and -operated vehicle," Kaplan says, adding that "Bush's neglect of the domestic epidemic has borne fruit," as data show that the number of new HIV cases in the United States is rising. AIDS organizations and lobbyists should "engage in a resurgent AIDS activism," African leaders should "publicly protest the 'morality'-based strictures of Bush's largesse," HIV-positive people should "raise their voices" when they lose access to treatment services and media outlets should "pick up on" the "mounting evidence" showing that abstinence-only sex education programs put teenagers at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, Kaplan says. "It will take a series of eruptions like these to rattle the new Republicans' AIDS machine," she concludes (Kaplan, Nation, 12/20).
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