And now for the good news

And

now for the good news

Progress is being made in the fight against AIDS in Africa, thanks in no small part to the president's aid program. But that's not what some people want to hear.

This is probably the best news I have heard on the fight against AIDS in Africa, we know that that disease is rampant on that continent and we know that billions are spent there each year. This news story is brought to us by John Donnelly at the Boston Globe I was surprised tof see such a story at the Globe to be honest. Here is what he had to say in this great news story.

FIVE YEARS AGO, in Jos, Nigeria, a city on the country's central plateau, Dr. John Idoko regularly made rounds in a hospital packed with people dying from AIDS because they couldn't pay for the antiretroviral drugs necessary to keep them alive. Three years ago, as the price of the drugs plummeted, the Nigerian doctor was able to deliver the life-extending medication to 700 patients-until his government's supply ran out for several months.

Today, the change for the better is astonishing: Idoko now treats nearly 6,000 HIV-positive patients. He has expanded his clinic three times in five years, and his waiting room once again is too crowded. ``Now, we are eyeing an abandoned building nearby," he said last week, chuckling.

The major reason for Idoko's success is the Bush administration's AIDS program, which in the last three years has sent billions of dollars to Africa and helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When I moved to Africa three years ago, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was just getting off the ground. As I return to Washington this month, the $15 billion program is just hitting its stride, and many Africans believe it has become the single most effective initiative in fighting the deadly scourge.

``The greatest impact in HIV prevention and treatment in Africa is PEPFAR-there's nothing that compares," Idoko said.

Now that is great news is it not? How can anyone say that this is bad news or that the US is not doing its part in the fight on AIDS? Well apparently the World Community can as they refuse to acknowledge that the US has done this much good in Africa. I know why this is the case, and Mr. Donnelly hits on it in his article. Here is what he had to say about the World community and the AIDS conference that took place in Toronto last week.

“That debate was on full view last week at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, which ended Thursday. While the AIDS epidemic in Africa is as urgent a crisis as it ever was-an estimated 24 million are infected on the continent and as many as 2 million died last year from AIDS-related illnesses-there are now at least some hopeful signs, though few activists in Toronto wanted to give the United States any of the credit. Indeed, the politically polarized bickering, according to those in Washington AIDS policy circles, could have effects far beyond the Beltway, threatening to impede national and international funding for AIDS programs.
. . .
One telling moment in Toronto came last Sunday when Bill Gates, whose foundation has spent billions on global health in recent years, praised PEPFAR, prompting a chorus of boos from the audience. Earlier, Stephen Lewis, the passionate United Nations special envoy on AIDS in Africa, said that the Bush administration's push for abstinence programs as part of its ABC policy-which calls for abstinence until marriage, being faithful to one's partner, and failing that, using condoms-amounts to ``incipient neocolonialism."

For three years, a wide range of AIDS activists, including Lewis, have been hammering at what they perceive as faults of the US AIDS program, creating the perception that the program is riddled with trouble. They have criticized the administration for funneling its billions into PEPFAR rather than the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, another new initiative based in Geneva. They have claimed that the US-funded treatment programs were moving far too slowly. They have questioned the wisdom of the US preference for funding faith-based groups, and have complained that Congress's mandate to spend one-third of all money targeted for prevention on abstinence programs is excessive and counterproductive.

So as we can see here they are quite miffed at the fact the US is going this alone, they want that 15 billion dollars filtered through their organizations so they can enrich themselves. They disguise it as the fact that the US programs are moving to slowly, and that they have a preference to teach abstinence and if that doesn’t work then use condoms. I have one question as I wrap this up, who is really looking out for the African people and their fight against such a deadly disease, Europe, the UN and Canada? Or the US that has given a more money than all three combined? I am sure that Dr. John Idoko will tell you differently if you talked to him in person, and he has made it clear that the last 5 years he has seen a great improvement in the fight on AIDS in his neck of the woods. It seems that the US has the right attitude towards this and once again the World is pissed because they can not get their greedy hands on some of my tax dollars.