George W. Bush and the fight against AIDS

The US administration gets a lot of criticism for its conservative policy on sex-related issues. One of the points we often hear is that the promotion towards young people of abstention from sex, is not helping the struggle against AIDS.

But today, Peter Piot, the director of UNAids (the agency of the UN that coordinates the battle against AIDS) paints a very positive picture of the role of the US in this field. In a two-page interview with Koen Vidal in Belgian newspaper De Morgen, he praises president Bush and the financial boost he gave to the worldwide fight against AIDS.


 
Dr Peter Piot in De Morgen: "you won't like to hear it, but Bush gave an enormous push to the fight against AIDS".

Here are some translated quotes:

You know, in Europe they don't like to hear it, but in fact we owe a lot to US president George W Bush. In his State of the Union of 2003, he promised 15 billion dollars to the fight against AIDS in developing countries. And what's at least as important: he kept his promise and we received the money. The volume of the amount has completely changed our financial position. Before, at best we received a hundred million here and some millions there. When UNAids was established in 1994 we had an annual budget of 200 million dollar. Peanuts. Now we have 6.1 billion dollar each year.

Bush imposes three conditions. First, the money must go to fifteen concentration countries: Botswana, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Vietnam etc. All countries that are heavily affected by AIDS. Secondly, the largest part of the budget should go to treatment of already infected persons. For that, we have to use brand drugs, not the cheaper 'generic' drugs, as they are called. As far as prevention is concerend, one third should go to programs that are promoting abstention from sex.

Did you know that, for example, the US is the largest funder of condoms in developing countries? And don't forget that there often is a difference between American rhetorics on sex-related issues like AIDS, and what really happens on the ground. The neocon ideas that go around the world, are in fact intended for domestic use in the US. For Bush, it is a way to connect with the fundamentalists of the christian right. But in practice and on the ground, the impact of these views is relatively small. Moreover, it is not only the US that imposes conditions on USAids. The Scandinavian countries are imposing conditions too. Sweden, Norway and Finland are heavily against the distribution of clean needles to drug addicts.