There is exciting news in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention!
1) A promising new microbicidal gel has shown that women who used it were 39% less likely over all to contract HIV than those who used a placebo. Regular usage even reduced transmission chances by 54%!
2) A study in Malawi showed that offering impoverished girls small amounts of money for regular school attendance reduced AIDS and herpes infection. After a year and a half of the program, girls who received payments were less than half as likely to be infected than girls whose families got no payments. The girls started to have sex later, less often and with fewer partners.
What this says to me is what we have known all along. Empowering women to make their own choices...whether through education or access to health information and resources...is a key to fighting AIDS and poverty.
Here's the article in the New York Times about it.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sam Daley-Harris talks Purpose, Poverty, Pitfalls and Redemption
Sam Daley-Harris is founder of RESULTS, a citizen lobby on ending global poverty, and founder of the Microcredit Summit Campaign. In May 2010 Sam gave a talk at TEDx NJ Libraries titled: “Purpose, Poverty, Pitfalls, and Redemption”. Please listen to Sam’s remarks and pass it on to friends if you enjoyed it as much as I did! Here’s the link:
Click here to see the video
FYI...Here is the link to all of the TEDx NJ Libraries talks: http://www.tedxnjlibraries.com
Click here to see the video
FYI...Here is the link to all of the TEDx NJ Libraries talks: http://www.tedxnjlibraries.com
Friday, July 16, 2010
Is Obama Backing away from the fight against Global AIDS?
This is an interview with Dr. Paul Zeitz- the executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a position he's held since 2001. Over the past decade, he's led GAA to promote universal access to prevention, treatment and care, among other issues. As backlash against the Obama administration’s policies on global HIV/AIDS continues to mount, Dr. Zeitz shares his perspective with Change.org.
Click Here for the Interview
Here is an exerpt:
Q: One of President Bush’s signature acts was the creation of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — the largest single effort any nation’s yet made to scale up HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. PEPFAR was a major victory for activists around the globe. How has the program been impacted since Obama took office?
Back in 2008, President Bush decided that before he left office, he wanted to authorize another 5-year PEPFAR cycle. Senators Obama, Biden and Clinton all cosponsored the bill to reauthorize the bill, known as the Lantos-Hyde bill, committing the U.S. government to providing $48 billion over five years [2009-2013]. It was a truly historic act by then-president Bush to really take the initiative to the next level.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama signed a pledge committing to $50 billion for global AIDS spending for the period of 2009-2013. He also spoke at the Saddleback Church HIV/AIDS conference and verbally committed to increasing global AIDS spending by at least 1 billion per year, if he was elected.
Then he got elected, then the transition team started governing, and within 18 months, everything’s changed.
Q: Since Obama took office, what about his administration's approach have you found particularly disheartening?
We’d had breakthrough with Bush. Global leaders and stakeholders had committed themselves to universally scale up aids prevention and access to treatment. The whole global international community was in solidarity with the goal of universal access to prevention and treatment.
President Obama and his administration have taken a radically different position. It’s crystal clear that they don’t believe that HIV/AIDS treatment should be made available to everyone, because they think it’s too expensive. I’ve sat and others have sat in high-level meetings in which administration officials talking about how the U.S. government could not sustain the demands of a “treatment mortgage,” saying, “How can we afford this?”
The president has virtually flat-lined [PEPFAR] in his first two budget request. Even more shockingly, Obama has requested cuts to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, & Malaria’s FY2011 budget — this despite how effective the Global Fund’s work has been as a multilateral financing instrument. It’s achieved remarkable results, saving an estimated 4.9 million lives. The Obama administration says they’re committed to multilateralism. So why do they want to cut U.S. government support of the program?
Click Here for the Interview
Here is an exerpt:
Q: One of President Bush’s signature acts was the creation of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — the largest single effort any nation’s yet made to scale up HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment. PEPFAR was a major victory for activists around the globe. How has the program been impacted since Obama took office?
Back in 2008, President Bush decided that before he left office, he wanted to authorize another 5-year PEPFAR cycle. Senators Obama, Biden and Clinton all cosponsored the bill to reauthorize the bill, known as the Lantos-Hyde bill, committing the U.S. government to providing $48 billion over five years [2009-2013]. It was a truly historic act by then-president Bush to really take the initiative to the next level.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama signed a pledge committing to $50 billion for global AIDS spending for the period of 2009-2013. He also spoke at the Saddleback Church HIV/AIDS conference and verbally committed to increasing global AIDS spending by at least 1 billion per year, if he was elected.
Then he got elected, then the transition team started governing, and within 18 months, everything’s changed.
Q: Since Obama took office, what about his administration's approach have you found particularly disheartening?
We’d had breakthrough with Bush. Global leaders and stakeholders had committed themselves to universally scale up aids prevention and access to treatment. The whole global international community was in solidarity with the goal of universal access to prevention and treatment.
President Obama and his administration have taken a radically different position. It’s crystal clear that they don’t believe that HIV/AIDS treatment should be made available to everyone, because they think it’s too expensive. I’ve sat and others have sat in high-level meetings in which administration officials talking about how the U.S. government could not sustain the demands of a “treatment mortgage,” saying, “How can we afford this?”
The president has virtually flat-lined [PEPFAR] in his first two budget request. Even more shockingly, Obama has requested cuts to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, & Malaria’s FY2011 budget — this despite how effective the Global Fund’s work has been as a multilateral financing instrument. It’s achieved remarkable results, saving an estimated 4.9 million lives. The Obama administration says they’re committed to multilateralism. So why do they want to cut U.S. government support of the program?
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