Bush Requests $30 Billion to Fight AIDS
President Bush called Wednesday for Congress to spend $30 billion to fight global AIDS over the next five years, a near doubling of financing that is part of a White House effort to burnish Mr. Bush’s humanitarian credentials before he meets leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations next week.
The initiative, if approved, would build on a program that grew out of the president’s 2003 State of the Union address, when he asked for $15 billion over five years for prevention, treatment and care of AIDS patients in developing countries. Congress approved more than $18 billion, but the program is set to expire next year.
AIDS advocacy organizations praised Mr. Bush for proposing the additional money, but said the plan — which he said would provide drugs for 2.5 million patients — did not go nearly far enough toward meeting the international community’s stated goal of treating the estimated 10 million patients in developing nations.
“It’s a modest increase, it’s important that he reaffirmed it, but we will need the next president to do more,” said Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. “We’re not getting ahead of the AIDS crisis. We’re tempering it.”
Administration officials concede that point and say the White House is hoping Mr. Bush’s announcement will prod other Group of 8 countries, as well as nations that have growing economies, to make spending commitments of their own.
“The goal of universal access isn’t a United States goal, it’s a global goal,” said Mark R. Dybul, the administration’s global AIDS coordinator. “The rest of the world is going to need to respond if we are going to achieve these goals.”
The United Nations reports that there are nearly 40 million people worldwide living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; last year three million died from their infections. In his announcement in 2003, Mr. Bush said he was committed to offering treatment for two million H.I.V. patients by 2008. But so far, he said, the program, called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has paid for treatment for just 1.1 million people in 15 nations.
Advocates complain that the new goal, bringing the number of patients treated to 2.5 million, is not that much more ambitious than the old one. “By 2013 there will be 12 million people that urgently need medicines,” Mr. Zeitz said.
The White House, however, said that in addition to providing treatment for 2.5 million, the new money would prevent 12 million new infections and provide care for more than 12 million people.
Mr. Bartlett said the president was convinced America’s image in the world would improve because of it.
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