BY DAVID BURGY

In print | October 2, 2008

Thirty three days from today, the nation will go to the polls and vote in one of the most important elections that our nation has ever faced. Americans will decide, on November 4, the course which our country will take for the next four years. Yet regardless of who is elected that day, the new leader of the free world will face a whole host of issues that will not be able to be explained away or swept under the rug, specifically one which the Bush administration and Congress recently handled better than expected.

The issue at hand: the AIDS epidemic. Over the summer, Congress passed H.R. 5501, thus reauthorizing PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The bill, also known as the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008, was then signed into law on July 30, 2008, by President George W. Bush. The bill expands efforts by the United States to lead the global fight against HIV/AIDS, and provides $48 billion (triple current funding levels) to 15 countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, the largest contribution by any individual nation to the global fight. The goal of the legislation is to prevent 7 million news cases of HIV, treat 2 million people infected with HIV, and provide care for 10 million people infected with HIV/AIDS and affected by those infected with HIV/AIDS. The bill also repeals the HIV travel ban, which disallowed HIV-positive immigrants and visitors to the United States.

Though the passage of H.R. 5501 is a great move for the current leadership in continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS, much more must still be done. New cases in developing nations are still cropping up at alarming rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, and numbers of new HIV infections in the U.S continue to rise. For the fight to end in victory, more nations must make a combined pledge to contribute funding to slow the spread of the AIDS epidemic beyond its current levels. Citizens of the developed countries have a moral obligation to ease the suffering of those affected by this epidemic, resulting from their historical and economic relationships to those developing nations. And although the United States can do much to lead the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS, other developed nations cannot deny that they also have a moral duty to contribute more to the fight.

Another essential step in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS is addressing social factors that contribute to alarming increases in rates of infection in certain demographics. According to UNAIDS, some of these factors include gender inequality, marginalization of LGBT people, drug use, the sex industry, extreme poverty coupled with lack of information or education, and conflict in unstable regions. The marginalization of these populations by other segments of society perpetuates the conditions that have thus far allowed for the rampant spread of HIV across the globe and stigmatized those living with the disease. Any solution to the AIDS epidemic must include responses to these factors, which is why PEPFAR solutions must be sensitive to the cultural contexts in which the epidemic is occurring. This is true whether the context is local or international.

While PEPFAR only applies to other nations, the factors listed by UNAIDS are similarly at play in the United States. Among the 2006 results from the CDC’s HIV incidence surveillance system are estimates that 46 percent of new HIV infections occurred among African Americans, 36 percent occurred among Whites and 18 percent occurred among Latinos. Furthermore, 73 percent of new HIV infections occurred among males, and 72 percent of new HIV infections among males were among men who have sex with men. The increase in HIV infections, as measured by the CDC, is unacceptable in our nation, and is intertwined with issues of identity along with economic ones. We must take a stand now against the injustice that is the AIDS epidemic, and battle the racism, homophobia, classism, stigmatization of those infected with HIV, and marginalization of communities in order to effectively campaign against HIV. The people being infected every day are our neighbors, our loved ones, our friends, and our community members. While most in our generation have, for the most part, not had to deal with losing someone they cared about to HIV/AIDS, rising rates of infection will change this fact for many of you.

If you are serious about battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, take your first step on Sunday, October 19 by participating in AIDS Walk Philly 2008.

David is a junior. He can be reached at dburgy1@swarthmore.edu.

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