Campaign to End HIV/AIDS in Africa

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is the greatest global threat in the world today. Africa is ground zero of the crisis – home to just over 10% of the world’s population, but nearly two-thirds of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. In 2006 alone, more than 2 million Africans died of AIDS.

Africa has been hardest hit by HIV/AIDS because poverty has left its people most vulnerable, and inadequate access to health care and other basic needs has fueled the spread of the disease. Now, African efforts to defeat HIV/AIDS are hindered by insufficient resources, by the crippling debt burden, and by U.S. and international policies that restrict access to essential treatment and comprehensive health care. Since the beginning of the pandemic, over 20 million Africans have died of AIDS. Yet the world is still failing to respond to this crisis with the urgency that is required.

In recent years, international conferences and United Nations (UN) meetings have produced new pledges to act. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria was created in 2002 to raise and disburse additional resources to combat these deadly diseases. While this vehicle has made important progress in over 130 countries, and while it could provide the key to defeating HIV/AIDS in Africa and globally, it remains under-funded by the U.S. and other wealthy countries. In 2003, President Bush committed to a paltry $200 million a year to support the Global Fund, instead of the $3.5 billion that would constitute its equitable contribution based on its share of the global economy.

Rather than channeling its HIV/AIDS funding through the Global Fund, the Bush Administration announced its own initiative in 2003, the so-called “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” (PEPFAR). This program initially promised $15 billion over a five-year period to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. The President created a new government bureaucracy to oversee this plan, headed by a former pharmaceutical company executive.

But PEPFAR is under-funded, and it only provides support to 12 countries in Africa, leaving three-quarters of the continent out of the picture. Moreover, the Bush Administration’s reluctance to promote access to cheaper, generic versions of essential HIV/AIDS medications in this program undermines its reach and reveals the White House’s close ties to the pharmaceutical lobby.

In addition, the Bush Administration supports conservative measures that undermine a comprehensive response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. These include emphasizing abstinence-only measures, prioritizing prevention over treatment, and opposing the use of condoms. This perspective places a premium on ideology over science and public health, and flies in the face of what is known about the most effective ways to stem the spread of this disease in Africa and elsewhere.

At a UN review of global progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS in May 2006, international governments once again fell far short of acting appropriately to combat this epidemic. Despite their recognition that almost $23 billion per year would be required by 2010 to finance the global AIDS effort, the U.S. and other world leaders failed to establish clear targets to achieve such a goal.

HIV/AIDS can be defeated, and millions of lives can still be saved in Africa and globally, if the U.S. and other countries mount an urgent international response to support African efforts to beat this pandemic. But because most of those affected by the disease to date are poor and Black, in Africa and here in the U.S., the response of policymakers to the HIV/AIDS crisis has been slow and absolutely inadequate. The pattern of the HIV/AIDS pandemic reveals clearly a system of global apartheid, where access to wealth and basic human rights, like the right to health, is dictated largely by race and place.

Throughout Africa, communities, organizations and activists are doing what they can to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and to provide care to those living with the disease. But their efforts are hindered by insufficient resources, and by international policies imposed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and others that undermine access to health care and impede Africa’s development.

Africa Action asserts health as a fundamental human right. Our Campaign to End HIV/AIDS in Africa seeks to mobilize U.S. activists to change the policies of our own government to help end the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.

Check out our “Campaign Updates” for more information on our current initiatives to change U.S. policy on this issue.

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