Global AIDS Funding in Danger – Where is Harkin? 

As World AIDS Day is on December 1st, we commemorate the millions of lives lost to HIV/AIDS around the world. But we also recognize the incredible progress we have made in this global fight. Since the first cases were detected in the early 1980s, scientific advancements have converted what was once a death sentence diagnosis into a chronic, manageable condition. Newer, more effective anti-HIV medications with fewer side effects and long acting formulations are in the research pipeline, and the groundbreaking PARTNER study this year confirmed that, when a person living with HIV has controlled the virus in their body with effective anti-HIV drugs, the risk of infecting another person is reduced by more than 99%. Leaders like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have projected that “we can end the AIDS pandemic in the next 10 years.” 

We stand closer than ever to finally ending this pandemic once and for all, but to succeed in this time of global health insecurity, Congress must restore some of the unwise funding cuts made to global HIV programs by the Obama Administration since 2011. The United States has carved out a leadership role in supporting life-saving global AIDS programs – in large part through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a signature program launched by President Bush that has enjoyed strong bipartisan congressional support since 2003. Since its inception, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has had immense success combating HIV/AIDS among some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Today, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief helps provide more than 6.7 million people with life-saving treatment. The tide has begun to turn, and both deaths and new infections are starting to decline steeply. In addition, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s investments in health workers, labs, disease tracking and surveillance systems, and community workers for contact tracing are paying huge and lasting dividends in the urgent global response to control and contain deadly outbreaks. The infrastructure, which is funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, already stopped an Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2012, and stopped Ebola in its tracks in Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world’s most populous cities.

President Obama and former Secretary Clinton have made achievement of an “AIDS-free generation” a U.S. policy goal. However, since 2011, the Obama Administration sought and obtained $600 million in funding cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The program found efficiencies to continue its work, but has come to the end of its ability to cut costs while continuing progress towards ending the disease. Adding insult to injury this year, the U.S. global AIDS budget is currently poised for an additional blow, when the White House proposed, and the Senate agreed, to another $300 million budget cut this year. For health workers, governments, and patients, these cuts translate to fewer new enrollments on life-saving treatment, fewer preventative measures instated, and more new infections while people with HIV wait for medicine needed to control the virus. We have the knowledge and the tools we need to end needless suffering and deaths from HIV/AIDS, but budget cuts continue to thwart our progress towards ending AIDS. 

Fortunately, the House of Representatives did not agree to the President’s global AIDS cut, and we have leadership in our very own state that can help correct this mistake. Retiring Senator Tom Harkin has long been an outspoken advocate for global health causes, and has a chance to close this chapter of his decades of service taking action to solidify his commitment to health and human rights for patients around the world. Last World AIDS Day, we were proud to stand with Senator Harkin as he joined a bipartisan, bicameral letter signed by over 40 members of Congress calling on President Obama to extend live-saving HIV drugs to at least 12 million people by 2016, doubling the numbers current at the time. Because of the incredible efficacy of treatment-as-prevention, adding 12 million from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to the many millions being treated by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the rapidly-growing millions more being treated by impoverished countries themselves, will mean a quick end to the largest epidemic in history. At the same time, fully funding the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, already on the ground in hard hit countries, will greatly protecting the world community from other emerging viruses and deadly zoonotic diseases.

Now, as the House and Senate attempt to reconcile their budgets in the next few weeks, former Senator Harkin can use his still powerful position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend his record, by leading efforts to fend off and restore cuts to global AIDS programs. We urge Senator Harkin to remain resolute as a champion of global AIDS funding and demand that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s depleted funds be replenished with $600 million by 2016, through a combination of introducing committee and floor amendments and other pressure on other Appropriators for the 2015 omnibus, as well as pushing for a germane amendment to fund the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in the upcoming emergency supplemental bill to fight Ebola. If Harkin, in his last days can leverage the current appropriations debates and concern about global health instability into the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief treating 12 million people with HIV, it will be a truly incredible accomplishment that will stand as a proud example to our incoming Senator—and to all the politicians coming through Iowa seeking support.