To be honest, I am a bit ashamed of my first reaction to the PEPFAR presentation. After spending the morning speaking of the HIV/AIDS issue on a domestic scale, and being completely floored by the statistics, I was shocked to hear that the US was spending such a large amount of effort and money on the HIV/AIDS global issue with the same problem going on in a domestic level. I felt horrible for thinking it, but shouldn’t we first fix our own issues before focusing on the rest of the world? Don’t get me wrong, I in no way whatsoever feel that an American’s life is more valuable than another human’s life, but it still had me puzzled. In D.C. 3.2% of the population is suffering from HIV/AIDS. Of those people, hundreds are unable to receive treatment. How can the PEPFAR know that thousands of deprived citizens all over the country are struggling to live without medication and still pump out 63 BILLION dollars a year to the rest of the world? Is it easier to get HIV/AIDS medication from a US organization living in Southern Africa than in Washington D.C?
I tried to imagine hearing the presentation as if I was a local resident living with HIV. From that point of view, I couldn’t help but to feel a little irritated. What’s worse, the US is the ONLY country making a significant effort to combat the global HIV/AIDS issue. Not only are we prioritizing non-Americans over our own citizens, we are the only ones doing it!
First reaction aside, I was also incredibly impressed by what I was hearing. I was always familiar with the stereotypes people had about AIDS/HIV patients, and I was very glad to know that a significantly large group of people did care about treating afflicted people. Hearing such negative stigmas about HIV/AIDS victims, I always thought people never gave them the attention/funding they required. Although there is no hope for a cure in the foreseeable future, there is hope that treatment will become more accessible and more lives will be saved.
Don't be ashamed, I can see exactly where you're coming from. I kept wondering what our morning presenter would ask the woman from PEPFAR, and looking back at my notes from the a.m. One of the striking things we were told to pay attention to that morning was 'Who is PEPFAR helping?' but more importantly, 'Who aren't they trying to help?' and the answer seemed to be and over-whelming 'ourselves!'. I found the presentation very interesting, I thought we asked a lot of good questions, and I think their cause is quite noble. But I couldn't help but feeling a lot like you did.
ReplyDeleteKate expressed similar sentiments over at Birth of a Notion (http://worldpolitics-birthofanotion.blogspot.com/2010/08/reflection-post-week-one.html), so I'm going to pose some of the same questions to you (and Fiona) as I did to her, because I'm very interested in hearing your responses.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal: There is certainly a tension between foreign assistance and domestic needs. But how are we going to generate the "shared and sustained global response" the PEPFAR representative talked about as necessary to the global fight against HIV/AIDS if we scale back our contribution? Do you think our contributing less will encourage other countries to contribute more? Remember, our funding contribution through PEPFAR isn't replacing other countries' HIV/AIDS funding: no one was funding such efforts prior to PEPFAR.
The point you raise is a good one, though: How do you think the U.S. should decide whether to spend its finite resources at home vs. abroad? How is this decision influenced by globalization, the economic crisis, and our status as a global superpower?
Scaling back funding for foreign HIV/AIDS aid will not exactly encourage other countries to contribute more, but it will shock other countries into realizing there is a problem. The saying "you don't know what you've got til it's gone" is quite true, and perhaps with the absence of US aid other countries will realize what was being done and follow suit. However, I don't encourage this kind of action. I do believe that we can't take care of everyone, or we will start overlooking some of our own citizens, which we are. I tried to look through the eyes of an American who is suffering from AIDS and isn't receiving any treatment. What is his reaction to the 63 billion that is being spent elsewhere? If I was him, I would be pretty outraged. I am not saying we should abandon the rest of the world, I am just saying maybe we should fix our own problem before we try to fix everyone else's. I don't recommend cutting spending on PEPFAR, but perhaps boosting domestic HIV/AIDS treatment funding while keeping the 63 billion on hold for several years.
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