US 3 Year Pledge to GAVI

Monday, June 13, 2011

Joanne Carter, executive director of RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund, released the following statement in response to the announcement that the United States will commit $450 million over the next three years to the GAVI Alliance:

“Today the United States made a strong commitment to a global plan to save 4 million lives by vaccinating 250 million children by 2015, pledging $450 million over three years to the GAVI Alliance. We congratulate the Obama Administration on this decision and pledge our support to ensure this funding is delivered. We also welcome USAID Administrator's Rajiv Shah's commitment to host a high-level conference on GAVI next year, which will be an important moment to assess our progress and hold donors accountable for their commitments.

“New vaccines to help prevent the biggest killers of children — pneumonia and diarrhea — will accelerate our progress on stopping needless disease and death. These new vaccines are game changers, and it is heartening that even in a challenging budget environment, the U.S. can seize new opportunities presented by medical innovation. With foreign aid currently accounting for less that 1 percent of the federal budget, our leadership on global health and our commitment to the poorest people on the planet must not fall victim to senseless budget cuts.

“The GAVI Alliance is an innovative and effective global partnership, which helps deliver new and underutilized vaccines in poor countries, and its efforts have already saved more than five million lives. With significant new funding commitments from the U.K., Australia, Japan, France, and many other donors, this is truly a shared global effort.

“It will ultimately be up to Congress to fulfill this U.S. commitment to help turn the tide against the leading childhood killers. We look forward to working with members of Congress to ensure that this pledge is fully met, and other funding for global health and poverty alleviation remains a top priority.”

UN Statement on HIV/AIDS

New York, NY

June 10, 2011

ACTION (Advocacy to Control TB Internationally) Director Kolleen Bouchane issued the following statement in response to the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption today of a new political declaration on HIV/AIDS.

“This morning at the United Nations High Level Meeting (HLM) on HIV/AIDS, the UN General Assembly adopted an ambitious new declaration demonstrating a serious commitment to intensify the global response to the AIDS epidemic, including by addressing TB as the leading killer of people with HIV. The declaration comes 30 years after the illness that came to be known as AIDS was first described, 10 years since the first UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, and five years after the 2006 UN Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS.

“As the declaration acknowledges, the world has made substantial progress against AIDS. Less than a decade ago, virtually no oneliving with HIV/AIDS in low-income countries was receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) — now 6.6 million people have access to these life saving drugs. The rate of new infections has declined by more than 25 percent in over 30 countries, and HIV deaths have declined more than 20 percent in the last five years.

“Recent research shows that providing early ART can reduce transmission by 96 percent. Building upon this knowledge, the declaration represents another milestone in the fight against AIDS by setting a target of reaching 15 million individuals with ART access by 2015. Now, governments, the private sector, communities, and civil society must act to fulfill this target, and doing so will go a long way to preventing new infections.

“ACTION is grateful for work of many including the Brazil and Thailand country delegations, who proved to be instrumental in moving this declaration forward, as well as the powerful voices coming from the Treatment Action Campaign, Health GAP, Treatment Action Group and Medicins Sans Frontieres, among others who were able to secure this strong commitment.

“We commend UN member states for recognizing the vital importance of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to the global AIDS response, and for calling on donor governments to provide the highest level of financing to meet its resource needs. We call for an emphasis on tuberculosis and TB/HIV in the next round of programs to be approved in order save an additional million lives from TB/HIV by 2015.

“We also commend the member states for committing to investing in accelerated research for new diagnostics to treat TB in peopleliving with HIV — a critical step to stop the leading killer of people with HIV.

“Despite these considerable commitments, we remain alarmed by the weakening of key language from earlier drafts aimed at addressing TB, the leading killer of people living with HIV/AIDS. The dilution of previously considered commitments is unfortunate, especially given new scientific modeling unveiled at the UN this week by the Stop TB Partnership in collaboration with the World Health Organization and UNAIDS showing that one million additional lives could be saved by 2015 by more aggressively treating and preventing TB disease in people living with HIV.

“Previous drafts of the declaration included explicit commitments to fully implement the Global Plan to Stop TB 2011-2015, including $9.6 billion committed for research and development of new TB tools appropriate for use among people living with AIDS — an essential component of the AIDS response. We are disappointed that the United States delegation moved to strike these commitments from the declaration shortly before the text was made final.

“Despite the shortfalls, ACTION celebrates the achievements in this new declaration and remains committed to a more ambitious target on TB and TB-HIV. We urge global leaders to fight TB-HIV as a single disease withscaled-up and focused funding through direct aid and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. By doing so, leaders will have the opportunity to cut TB-HIV deaths by 80 percent and save an additional million lives by 2015.”

See also:

Joanne Carter, executive director, RESULTS Educational Fund, on Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-carter/tb-hiv-_b_873848.html

Kolleen Bouchane, director, ACTION, on Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kolleen-bouchane/aids-one-million-_b_872936.html

Mandy Slutsker, research associate, ACTION, on One.org

http://www.one.org/blog/2011/06/10/stop-aids-treat-tuberculosis/

ACTION Blog

http://www.action.org/blog/

Full text of the declaration

http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/65/L.77

Saturday's Conference Call

Tony Hall

Ambassador Tony Hall Will Be Our Guest. 

On Saturday, June 11, gather with your RESULTS group and call in to the national grassroots conference call. The call will begin at 2 pm ET HERE. (Call in early to help us guarantee an on-time start.)

Three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, former U.S. Ambassador Tony P. Hall, will be our special guest. He is one of the leading advocates for hunger relief programs and improving international human rights conditions in the world. Currently serving as Executive Director of the Alliance to End Hunger, Hall has served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger and the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Hunger. He was also the author of legislation supporting food aid, child survival, basic education, primary health care, microenterprise, and development assistance programs in the world’s poorest countries. Ambassador Hall founded and was chairman of the Congressional Hunger Center, a non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting hunger by developing leaders. He was also a founding member of the Select Committee on Hunger and served as its chairman from 1989 until it was abolished in 1993.

The entire RESULTS grassroots base is invited to join together on this call and hear Ambassador Hall’s inspiring words.  He will comment on how to remain powerful and persistent as we seek to change the conversation and make poverty a thing of the past.

“For the price of a Starbucks cup of coffee, you can vaccinate nine kids. It is absolutely awesome . . . [w]e’re not going to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world. Charity begins at home, but it does not end there.”

— Andrew Mitchell, UK Secretary of State for International Development, recently quoted in the Washington Post