House votes to triple U.S. funding for global fight vs. AIDS, other ills

from the Arizona Daily Star

WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to triple to more than $10 billion a year U.S. humanitarian spending on fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and other stricken areas of the world.

About $41 billion of the $50 billion over five years would be devoted to AIDS, significantly expanding a program credited with saving more than 1 million lives in Africa alone in the largest U.S. investment ever against a single disease.

Every day, another 6,000 people are infected with HIV, which causes AIDS, said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif.

"We have a moral imperative to act and to act decisively," Berman said.

The House voted 308-116 to extend and broaden the scope of the $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that President Bush promoted and Congress enacted in 2003. It has been hailed as a noteworthy foreign-policy success of the Bush presidency.

The White House, which backs the House bill, said the program is supporting anti-retroviral treatment for about 1.45 million people and is on track to meet its goals of backing treatment for 2 million, preventing 7 million new infections and providing care for 10 million, inclu- ding orphans and vulnerable children.

Last year, 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV and AIDS, according to the United Nations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, added that although the program is based on altruism, it has strengthened U.S. security.

Without addressing the AIDS pandemic, she said, it "will continue to spread its mix of death, poverty and despondency that is further destabilizing governments and societies, and undermining the security of entire regions."