For all the dignitaries on the
schedule at the International AIDS Conference this week in
Washington, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and former President Bill Clinton, it’s the absence of one that has activists talking.
With the conference being held in the U.S. for the first
time in 22 years, President Barack Obama is out of town
campaigning and raising money for his re-election. His only
presence is a 50-second cameo in a three-minute video welcoming
delegates. Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s only appearance is
in a video message to a meeting on the sidelines of the
conference on the role of the faith community.
“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” said Matthew Kavanagh,
head of policy for Health GAP, an advocacy organization on AIDS.
“The people who are touched by HIV in this country and who care
about HIV are potential core constituents for the president.”
Adding to the ire of activists is Obama’s proposed 2013
budget, which would cut funding for the President’s Emergency
Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative started by President George W. Bush, by seven percent compared with 2010 levels.
Part of the calculus for Obama is that the economy, the
federal budget deficit and the cost of health care are the
dominant issues in his race with Romney. At the same time,
public concern about HIV/AIDS has waned.
Pressing Issues
A survey by the Washington Post and the nonprofit Kaiser
Family Foundation found 10 percent of Americans identified
HIV/AIDS as the most urgent health problem facing the U.S.,
behind cancer, which was mentioned by more than a third,
obesity, diabetes, heart disease, insurance and health costs. In
1995, 44 percent named it as the most pressing health issue.
Obama’s stops this week, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars
convention on July 23 in Reno, Nevada, and the National Urban
League Conference today in New Orleans, give him a chance to
address issues that will loom larger in November.
HIV/AIDS is “not high on the list of what most voters care
about,” said Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “But those that
would be sympathetic to the movement to reduce AIDS, whether
it’s the increase in African-American men or how it affects
young children in Africa, are the same people he needs to get
out the door and vote for him in November.”
‘Loyal Troops’
Still, she said it makes sense for Obama to spend his time
in front of broader constituencies, including the National Urban
League, a century-old civil rights organization.
“The National Urban League is going to be like President
Obama’s army, so if you have to make a choice between the Urban
League and the International AIDS Conference you go with your
solid, loyal troops,” Schiller said.
For many activists, the bigger issue than Obama’s
attendance at the conference is his administration’s commitment
to funding global treatment for the disease.
Bush more than tripled U.S. funding for global treatment
during the last five years of his administration through the
program known as Pepfar. With that increase, the U.S. accounted
for about 59 percent of all donations for international AIDS
relief, according to Jennifer Kates, director of global health
and HIV policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, of Menlo Park,
California.
The U.S. has spent about $46 billion since 2003 combating
the disease internationally through Pepfar, which primarily
funds the purchase and distribution of antiretroviral drug
treatments for people in developing nations.
AIDS Budget
In 2010, the Pepfar budget was $6.9 billion, including
money to combat tuberculosis, the leading killer of AIDS
patients. If Obama’s current budget plan is enacted, the funding
will fall to $6.4 billion in fiscal 2013.
“It’s ironic but Bush, I think, when it came to HIV/AIDS,
understood the public health issue better than Obama,” said
Jessica Reinhart, a grassroots manager with the AIDS Healthcare
Foundation, a Los Angeles-based group that provides AIDS
treatment. “The fact that Obama’s going to cut funding for
Pepfar could possibly increase new infections.”
Human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, causes AIDS. The
virus attacks the immune system and leaves the body vulnerable
to a variety of life-threatening infections and cancers.
A record 34.2 million people worldwide are living with
HIV/AIDS according to the World Health Organization. In South
Africa alone, a country where almost 1 in 3 people survive on
less than $2 a day, 18 percent of those ages 15 to 49 are
infected, the data shows.
Enthusiasm Gap
Wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with a stop sign and the
message “Stop Pepfar Cuts,” Reinhart, who led a protest from
the convention to the White House on July 23, said she’ll
continue supporting the president. Her enthusiasm has
diminished, though.
“He’s upset a lot of the AIDS community, and it could be
detrimental to his candidacy,” Reinhart said.
Still, total spending on HIV/AIDS programs has increased
during Obama’s term. It would rise to $28.4 billion in fiscal
2013, up from $27.7 billion in 2012 and $27 billion in 2011,
according to data from the Kaiser foundation.
Administration officials defended the president’s
priorities and his attention to the issue.
Eric Goosby, Obama’s Global AIDS Coordinator, said the U.S.
wants other countries to carry a larger portion of the financial
load.
“The United States can’t be ministries of health for all
of these countries,” Goosby said in an interview. “Our best
chance at not having the United States be the predominant
resource motor for HIV treatment and HIV/TB treatment on the
planet is to bring others to the table to put their resources to
it.”
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for Obama’s National Security
Council, said in an e-mail that “the most important metric for
Pepfar is lives saved, not dollars spent, and through smart
investments we are delivering results.”
