July 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm | posted by Betsy Avila
Yesterday, within the robust walls of the US Capitol, four important players in the game of private-sector organizations met to discuss the importance of public-private partnerships, as well as US federal funding, to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. Olutosin Akinyode and I attended the forum.
Lisa Bohmer (Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation), Maurice Middleberg (Global Health Council), Jeff Richardson (Abbott Fund) and Jane Kambalame (Embassy of the Republic of Malawi) held a hearing illustrating the necessity of PEPFAR as vital to the effectiveness of each organization.
Many of these groups are funded and supported by PEPFAR and are examples of what the bill has done and can do in the future – increased support will allow them to reach more men, women and children with HIV/AIDS. The reauthorize PEPFAR bill will double the number of people on retroviral treatment to 3 million, including over 450,000 children.
All the information you need to make your call is here.(more…)
July 16th, 2008 at 12:26 pm | posted by ONE.Partners
By 2010, over 20 million children will have lost a parent to AIDS. The vast majority of these children live in developing countries, with eighty percent in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Less than one in ten of these children receive any form of external support. Without a safety net, these children are more likely to drop out of school, to be malnourished, to lose their homes, to face discrimination and abuse, and to contract HIV themselves.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR in short, offers hope to children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. By providing key funding, PEPFAR enables its implementation partners to reach needy children and their families with life-saving treatment, prevention, and care.
Thanks to such support, Claire and her siblings in Rwanda are on the path to a brighter future. Claire’s parents died of AIDS when she was 17 years old, leaving her to care for her three younger siblings and two cousins. HIV positive herself, Claire was forced to rent their house for income and move her family into the backyard shed. In 2005, FXB International stepped in and provided the family with food, educational support, health care, HIV treatment, and grants to operate a small business. Today, Claire is a student at the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology, where she studies dietary therapy for people living with HIV. FXB continues to send her siblings and cousins to school, so that the children now enjoy a better chance of achieving their full potential.
In urban slums in South Africa, students like Nomthandazo are benefiting from HIV prevention and school support programs. In her early teens, Nomthandazo’s father passed away and her mother later died from AIDS. Although Nomthandazo’s aunt helped ensure that her basic needs (food shelter, medicine) were met, Nomthandazo had no one to teach her about sex, AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections.
Fortunately, Nomthandazo’s teachers recognized her need for guidance and support. Nomthandazo was enrolled in an after-school program operated by FXB International. Through the program, Nomthandazo was able to learn important health and life skills including HIV/AIDS education and received counseling to help her cope with her grief and growing pains. She is now confident that she has the knowledge to make informed and safe choices in life.
Stories such as Claire’s and Nomthandazo’s demonstrate the need for HIV prevention, treatment, and care in resource-poor settings. Success stories like theirs can be repeated on a larger scale with full funding from Congress for PEPFAR, including orphans and vulnerable children programming.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:39 am | posted by Josh Chernila, ONE Online Communities Coordinator
Yesterday, two amendments which would have limited the scope of PEPFAR Re authorization were overwhelmingly defeated.
The first, sponsored by Senator DeMint would have limited the countries to which PEPFAR assistance could be distributed:
The Senate voted, 70-24, to table, or kill, the amendment from Jim DeMint , R-S.C., to limit the five-year, $50 billion bill to 15 poor countries where it already operates.
The second, sponsored by Senator Bunning, was defeated even more resoundingly:
Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) amendment to reauthorize the program for five years at $15 billion also failed by a vote of 16-80.
Senators Sam Brownback, and Hillary Clinton were among the Senate champions taking the floor yesterday in support of PEPFAR reauthorization and in opposition to the failed amendments. Senators Joe Biden and Dick Lugar have been shepherding the bill through the Senate.
The $50 billion PEPFAR re-authorization bill keeps the core intent of the universally acclaimed President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and expands the amount of funding and breadth of distribution. By providing over 2.1 Million with life-saving retroviral treatment, PEPFAR has been responsible for giving an entire generation a second chance at life, and saved millions of children from the challenges of living without parents.
ONE members nationwide have been calling in to their Senators’ offices in overwhelming numbers to declare their support of PEPFAR Re authorization at the $50 billion level and to declare their opposition to any proceedural measures which could derail this critical, life-saving bill.
No one can be certain about how any bill will fare in the US Senate, but if yesterday’s proceedings are an indication there’s good reason to be optimistic.
Click here, to register your phone calls and keep up the pressure. Things look promising, but there’s a long way to go.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:59 pm | posted by matt.higginson
I just finished a conference call regarding PEPFAR with Senator Harry Reid and a few fellow ONE volunteers. Senator Reid wanted to touch base with some of his NV constituents who have been following the progress of PEPFAR and actively pushing for passage this year, and share with us his gratitude for helping to move this important legislation forward.
Senator Reid mentioned that he had hoped to pass PEPFAR before the G8 summit and was disappointed that it didn’t, but was very pleased to announce that after the bill had been blocked for weeks by only a few senators, he was finally able to bring PEPFAR to Senate floor for a vote. Senator Reid said, “It is critical that we pass this important legislation. Diseases like AIDS, Malaria and TB are ravaging the developing world. In Africa alone AIDS kills 8,000 Africans every day, it takes no weekends off.”
ONE volunteers, Amber McIntosh, Adam Bellamy, Renee Meyocks, Karen Frost-Arnold, and Emily Miller were all eager for the opportunity to represent the 13,000 ONE members in Nevada, and we thanked Senator Reid for his leadership and commitment to pass PEPFAR.
Amber was able to ask Senator Reid how he envisioned the process will move forward, Senator Reid responded that he hopes the bill will pass tomorrow.
Karen was able to tell Senator Reid about her trip to Zambia, and how grateful she is to know that this legislation will commit resources to people just like those she met in Zambia who were suffering in their fight against AIDS every day.
We are almost there! If you haven’t already, call your senators and ask them to vote to pass this critical bill.
There is a chance that an individual senator could raise something called a “budget point of order,” in which case we’d need 60 votes to bypass this additional obstacle or else the entire bill will be defeated.
We believe that there is strong, bipartisan support to pass PEPFAR, but we’re not out of the woods yet. This is the moment we need you most. Please call now and ask your senators to support this bill for $50 billion dollars in critical global AIDS, TB and malaria over the next five years.
All the information you need to make your call is here.
July 14th, 2008 at 11:03 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
The Senate “invoked cloture” on PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) late in the afternoon on Friday.
This basically means that the bill has passed another hurdle and is continuing to move forward.
We are expecting debate on the Senate floor starting today around 3pm EST. We’ll keep you posted and give you web link to the live debate as it happens.
A few senators have indicated that they intend to introduce amendments to reduce the amount of funding in the bill (currently $50 million for AIDS, TB and malaria over the next 5 years) but as of now, we don’t expect those amendments to pass.
July 11th, 2008 at 11:47 am | posted by Josh Lozman
This week PEPFAR released that as of March 2008, the program was contributing to the treatment of 1.73 million people, 1.68 million of them in Africa. PEPFAR has provided care to 12.7 million pregnant mothers and prevented an estimated 194,000 infant infections.
PEPFAR has now been appropriated $18.8 billion across its first five years and is the largest international health initiative in history focused on one disease. It’s original goal was to support treatment for 2 million people in its first five years. Nine months from the end of the first five years, the trajectory looks good to meet that goal.
Senator Reid asked for unanimous consent to begin debating the PEPFAR bill yesterday afternoon but a couple of Republican Senators continued to object (despite the assurance that amendments would be allowed.) Moments later, as you can watch in this video, he filed for cloture.
Rewind to your high school civics class or your favorite senate.gov glossary page:
Cloture is the only way that the Senate can place a time limit on consideration of a bill- and in doing so, overcome a potential filibuster. The Senate must allow for 30 additional hours for discussion before the vote, and then the bill must receive 60 votes in order to pass.”
This sets the vote for Friday, although we could potentially see the vote happen today. A successful cloture vote will allow the Senate to begin debating the bill.
Millions of lives around the world rely on this funding is on the line- so we’ll be watching and keeping you posted here on the ONE Blog with updates.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:58 pm | posted by Virginia Simmons
Hanh is a HIV-positive widow in Vietnam who was featured in “A Powerful Noise,” which was produced by Unify Films with participation from CARE and ONE.
Hello! My name is Hanh and I am from Vietnam.
I grew up in an isolated island in the northeast of Vietnam. When I was 18 I got married and moved with my husband to a place about three hours by boat from my homeland. We lived there for three years before I decided finally to take my daughter to a Vietnamese hospital after she had been sick for a long time. That was when I found out she was HIV positive. Then, I found out that my husband was too. They told me I didn’t even have to take a test. All of us were infected.
My daughter was three-and-a-half-years old. Eventually, they both passed away.
I returned to my home, and decided I needed to take action within my community. We had many HIV/AIDS related activities sponsored by outside organizations and programs like PEPFAR.
Ninety percent of AIDS patients in my community are taking ARV’s provided by PEPFAR and one hundred percent of us have been benefitting from other PEPFAR programs. We have access to medicine as well as treatment and care for children. But it’s not always about medical care. We also benefit from training courses and community building activities.
There are still many more problems that arise in my community. We need to increase access to medical treatment, and more people are always becoming infected. We also need to address problems like women’s awareness of HIV/AIDS, sexual education and care for children.
I hope that more and more people will benefit from programs like PEPFAR. Of course, being a beneficiary of the program myself I understand how important it is.
I want to say personally and on behalf of all people living with HIV in Vietnam that we are very grateful for programs like PEPFAR. Thank you for going forward hand in hand with us on this. We need your support.
I ask that you please keep going on the road that you chose.
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Yesterday, two amendments which would have limited the scope of PEPFAR Re authorization were overwhelmingly defeated. 
