African AIDS Crisis Outlives $15 Billion Bush Initiative

[Hissyspit]

Source: Washington Post

African AIDS Crisis Outlives $15 Billion Bush Initiative

JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 19 -- Five years after President Bush vowed to "turn the tide against AIDS" in Africa, he is traveling across a continent where the government's $15 billion investment has extended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and eased the sense of certain doom once experienced by millions of others.

But in the worst-hit areas, clustered mainly on Africa's southern tip, the tide has decidedly not turned. The epidemic continues to spread at a torrid pace that shows little sign of easing, with people contracting HIV much faster than sick ones can be put on crucial antiretroviral drugs, research shows.

Bush's initiative, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has not found a way to prevent a significant number of the estimated 1.7 million new cases of HIV each year in Africa. Nearly half of today's 15-year-olds in South Africa, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program, will contract the virus in their lifetimes at current infection rates, estimates show.

- snip -

In southern Africa's increasingly plentiful and well-funded AIDS clinics, patients appear healthy as they get checkups and pick up monthly supplies of antiretroviral drugs. But prevention messages, inside the clinics and beyond, continue to stress condoms, HIV testing and abstinence -- none of which have demonstrated major impacts in slowing the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021902847.html

[sakabatou]

1. And a war can outlive several trillion.

*sigh*

[kimmylavin]

2. Gee...

Gee, that "tide turning" worked just as well as his "surge"...


On another tanget, I had to read the whole article to find it, but there it was, near the end:

"They do claim, however, to have helped prevent 157,000 cases of pediatric HIV by assisting programs that have provided antiretroviral drugs to pregnant women. Administration officials rarely mention, however, that they have resisted calls to provide women with contraceptives.

Studies have shown that family planning could avert far more infections than antiretroviral drugs because many women, especially those with HIV, want fewer children. Critics say the restriction, along with PEPFAR's emphasis on untested abstinence programs, exists mainly to win support from conservative congressional Republicans, undermining the full potential of a program that the White House bills as one of the biggest humanitarian ventures in history."

This administration's twisted "morality" just keeps on killing people...

[newburgh]

3. Total BS! $15 billion would provide plenty of potable water and

nutritious food for the entire continent. Instead it's going to drug companies. Oh, and let's see the results of those tests. Uh, what tests? They don't test in Africa, they use those them thar "faith-based" diagnoses/estimates. No wonder the "prevention messages, inside the clinics and beyond, continue to stress condoms, HIV testing and abstinence" haven't worked- they don't have potable water or food. Hello?

The "crisis" will live on as long as money is thrown to the drug companies and "clinics"- aka money magnet...

History repeats itself. Remember the War on Cancer under Nixon? Throw more money at it and, voila! more cancer than ever... and more "research" and "clinics" and lots of new livelihoods. Who truly would want that "war" to end?