A Hot Topic: PEPFAR Reauthorization
In 2003, the United States Congress authorized a five-year piece of legislation known as the U.S. Leadership against Global HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act. This Act mandated the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, and set up the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) at the State Department to coordinate the U.S. government’s response to global HIV and AIDS. While it has been a milestone of increased American action regarding HIV and AIDS, aspects of the Act also raised ideology above science-based public health practice, resulting in funding for ineffective programs and a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.
The most outrageous example of ideology trumping science in the U.S. Leadership Act is the mandate that 33 percent of all prevention funding be directed to abstinence- until-marriage programs. This is one-third of all funds—not just those to prevent sexual transmission of HIV—but also to prevent perinatal (mother-to-child) and other types of transmission. In fact, OGAC requires that 66 percent of all funds to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV in every PEPFAR country go to abstinence- until-marriage programs.
Now, it’s five years later, and it’s time for reauthorization.
PEPFAR in 2008 is scheduled to be reauthorized amid a "big fight over abstinence-only programs," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. While many members of the Democratic Party generally “approve" of PEPFAR, they "strenuously oppose" its abstinence funding requirements. Other issues under debate are requirements that relief recipients sign a pledge opposing commercial sex work and that limit condom distribution to high-risk groups.
As of now, many activists are continuing to push hard for Congress to remove the abstinence-only-earmark from the language of the bill. The reauthorization process will surely heat up over the next few months and activists hoping for a better, medically accurate PEPFAR are gearing up to move quickly once the bill is introduced.
Youth activist Nickie, from Azerbaijan explained, “As someone who has experienced abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in the United States and abroad, the earmark that PEPFAR has implemented has been a devastating impediment to HIV prevention. I expect Congress to own up to their mistakes that cost the lives of young people everyday; it’s absolutely critical that they eliminate any requirement to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.”
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