Full Version: AIDS rates hit new highs, U.N. says
QUOTE
LONDON, Nov. 25 — Deaths and new cases of HIV/AIDS reached unprecedented highs in 2003 and are set to rise still further as the epidemic keeps a stranglehold on sub-Saharan Africa and advances across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. New global estimates released Tuesday based on improved data show about 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, including an estimated 2.5 million children under 15 years old. About five million people were infected in 2003 and more than three million died.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/997859.asp?0cv=CB10
With the war on terrorism, the Iraqi war and tensions so high all around the world, has the HIV\AIDS epidemic taken a back seat? As a world community, are our priorities messed up or are these victims in third world countries just collateral damage?
Well, we're funding it. Not at the level the President "recommended", but our government is actually funding AIDS programs. Not quite, though, all the programs needed.
Article
Can't tell, though, if this funding was actually voted on or just agreed to in committee and held up with all the other budgetary spending items that Congress failed to get finished this year. Anyone shed some insight here?
Article
QUOTE
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional negotiators agreed on Monday to a final $17.2 billion foreign aid bill with $400 million more to fight global AIDS (news - web sites) than President Bush (news - web sites) sought, and $650 million for his program to reward countries that institute political and economic reforms.
The bill to fund foreign aid programs tentatively cleared by Senate and House of Representatives negotiators provides $2.4 billion for the first year of the five-year, $15 billion program Bush called for to fight AIDS as well as tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases that prey on its victims.
The bill, which is about $1 billion above current levels, must go for final votes in both the House and Senate as lawmakers scramble to wrap up the tardy federal budget and other legislation so Congress can adjourn for the year.
Bush had asked for $2 billion for the AIDS initiative's first year, prompting an outcry from many lawmakers and AIDS activists that he was shortchanging the effort to stem the spread of a disease ravaging much of the globe.
The bill to fund foreign aid programs tentatively cleared by Senate and House of Representatives negotiators provides $2.4 billion for the first year of the five-year, $15 billion program Bush called for to fight AIDS as well as tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases that prey on its victims.
The bill, which is about $1 billion above current levels, must go for final votes in both the House and Senate as lawmakers scramble to wrap up the tardy federal budget and other legislation so Congress can adjourn for the year.
Bush had asked for $2 billion for the AIDS initiative's first year, prompting an outcry from many lawmakers and AIDS activists that he was shortchanging the effort to stem the spread of a disease ravaging much of the globe.
Can't tell, though, if this funding was actually voted on or just agreed to in committee and held up with all the other budgetary spending items that Congress failed to get finished this year. Anyone shed some insight here?
I don't think we are ignoring it. I think it is just not a popular issue with the media. It doesn't not pull in the rating the war does.
Though it doesn't get attention in the media, the US government and possibly the world are still paying attention to AIDS
Though it doesn't get attention in the media, the US government and possibly the world are still paying attention to AIDS
I dont think we should consider this merely as a matter of svaing African lives. AIDS has the potential to wipe out the Human race, a prospect you would hope political leaders would take seriously. It is on a massive increse here in the west. Massive investment is reasearch is required as is safe sex educationa dnt he renouncement if Iditoic Catholic leaders in Africe making up lies such as COndoms wont stop pregnancy and dieseases since "the bacteria are so small small they penetrate it nonetheless"(parapharsed) 
This is a simplified version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.