We have seen now that the global situation with AIDS is a growing crisis and we have seen one story among many of life with AIDS and that there is still life after AIDS. Now I want to discuss what is being done in the effort to fight HIV/AIDS.
If you were to go onto the internet right now and start doing some research you would probably find numerous programs world wide dedicated to fighting AIDS. The problem lies in that AIDS is spreading faster than funding permits to fight it effectively. Last year alone the UN estimated that even though roughly 10 billion dollars went to fight the AIDS epidemic they were about $8.1 billion dollars short of what was needed to fight it. These numbers have been exponentially growing every year. In 2006 it was estimated that the funding gap was $6 billion dollars short of what was needed. Based on the MDG (Millennium Development Goals) our goal is to give the majority of the world access to the medicine needed to fight AIDS by 2010 and to have universal access to them by 2015. In order to achieve these goals of universal access funds must be quadrupled by 2010 of what they were in 2007 which means that $42.2 billion dollars will be needed and for the 2015 goals $54 billion dollars will be required.
How are we meeting these goals one might ask? Well to be honest we aren’t but great leaps and bounds are being made to do so. President Bush requested $30 billion from Congress last year for PEPFAR (Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Program) to be used over the next five years and it passed. This marked a huge precedence because it was double the amount he requested just three years earlier, and the current Presidential candidates have all backed either PEPFAR or MDG. This is all great news but it’s obviously still not enough as we have seen. I believe in order to meet these goals it’s going to take more than just government intervention. It’s going to require direct intervention among the people. Here are some simple ways that anyone can make a difference.
Sponsor a child with AIDS: http://www.worldvisionexperience.org/?lid=1206&lpos=rgt_img_AIDSexp
Give directly to fight AIDS and poverty:
http://donate.wvus.org/OA_HTML/xxwvibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?a=b&lid=85&lpos=top_drp_WaysToGive
Create Awareness: Tell your friends, Blog about it, start a church program….
Sources:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/goals.html
http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2007/20070925_advocacy_grne2_en.pdf
http://data.unaids.org/pub/Report/2007/jc1388-makingmoneywork_en.pdf
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-time-to-give-up-the-search-for-an-aids-vaccine-814737.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/washington/31prexy.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1209065294-lxBwzemKblT82wCeF3ZOTQ
http://www.pepfar.gov/
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3 comments:
Ugh. I hate reading all of those statistics...it is so so unreal and depressing and yet somehow inspiring! That we can do something, that we are about to do something and that hopefully all of this awareness that is spreading these days, will cause a rucus! (I mostly just wanted to say rucus)
I want to do something, but what. I look at my white braclet and think but havent gotten farther that that. what do you think?
continued......how can people learn about your blog?
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