Reflection on AIDS presentation

The main feeling that I would say I had when I walked away from the PEPFAR presentation on AIDS relief in our Wednesday lab was amazement. $32 billion dollars is what stuck in my head throughout that meeting. The reason was that this sum of money was being spent completely on relief outside the United States for AIDS. I knew that in the early stages of PEPFAR we did this as an emergency humanitarian relief act. This I could understand. As so often happens however, it seems we have dug ourselves into a situation where we will have to continually pour money into this fund with little or no help from other nations.

Given our current economic situation, this is simply not a burden we can bear ourselves. We need international support. Before we went to the PEPFAR briefing, I recalled the figures of AIDS infection in the D.C. area. 3.2% of the population is infected with HIV. That is almost the same infection rate as Nigeria. I was relieved to hear we had a similar program in place for combating domestic AIDS problems, but was still thinking that this unilateral approach to the AIDS issue abroad will never be enough and will drain our monetary supply. I was also deeply disturbed to hear about the needle exchange program. Some people shy away from hard drugs like Heroine, because of the stigma of dirty needles, infection, and just the dirty connotation it carries with it. Now they will hear that they can just go and get clean needles, they may feel that it is safer and are more willing to take a risk and consume the drug. In a time where I feel we need to be extremely resolute in our anti-drug message, this program is a way of sanctioning further drug use.

The bottom-line for me is that with the current healthcare crisis we have in our own country, I feel that we can not afford to spend such enormous amounts of money on a global initiative, that so far has been a unilateral approach. We should look at ways to make these areas like sub-Saharan Africa more independent in terms of healthcare and possibly provide benefits and subsidies to NGO's and non-profits that should be the main force in this endeavor, given the rising debt in our government.