If you picked up the Sunday Times last weekend, hopefully you caught columnist Nick Kristof’s piece on the decline in AIDS-related deaths across Africa, thanks to US-funded programs like PEPFAR and the Global Fund. He rallies our US presidential candidates to protect our foreign aid funding and take pride of the work our work against AIDS.
His proof? A depression in the African coffin-maker industry, and a rise in HIV-free births from HIV-positive mothers. This could not have been accomplished without the help of US taxpayer dollars. Here’s an excerpt from Nick’s piece:
“With the help of Pepfar and the Global Fund, antiretrovirals, which are powerful AIDS drugs, are now available free in needy countries. AIDS will still kill millions of people, and there are already shortages of medications, but the tide is turning.
‘As a bottom line, millions would not be alive without Pepfar, while, at the same time, millions more in their families have been saved from poverty because mothers and fathers are productive again,’ notes Dr. Peter Piot<http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/piot.peter>, the former executive director of the United Nations program against AIDS and the author of a sparkling new memoir<http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-06-20/peter-piot-on-memoir-no-time-to-lose>, ‘No Time to Lose.’
‘If we have reached a turning point in the global AIDS response, it is also largely due to Pepfar,’ Dr. Piot added. ‘There are probably very few examples in international aid that can demonstrate such dramatic, direct impact.’”
Read the full article here: The Coffin-Maker Benchmark.
Help spread the good news and RT Nick Kristof’s tweet: RT @NickKristof US assistance to fight AIDS is putting coffin-makers out of business in Africa. Yay! My column: nyti.ms/N4SyOq.
