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

RESULTS screenings of "Building Hope" with filmmaker Turk Pipkin

Building Hope
Join filmmaker Turk Pipkin
at two special RESULTS screenings
Sunday, June 5 at 7:00 p.m. & 9:00 p.m.
at Austin’s new Violet Crown Cinema

8 p.m. reception for both audiences hosted by Turk and/or Christy Pipkin

AMLI Building / 434 W. 2nd St.downtown Austin

$13 includes 4-hr free parking (enter AMLI garage on San Antonio) and reserved seating

The theater has only 50 seats so buy your tickets in advance at: http://www.violetcrowncinemas.com

The Nobelity Project's inspiring new film is about building Mahiga Hope High School in Kenya. After rebuilding a rural Kenyan primary school, Turk Pipkin and The Nobelity Project pledged to help build the area’s first high school. Through challenges and triumphs, Building Hope chronicles the construction of Mahiga Hope High and the connection between a thousand people in the U.S. and an African community working to create a better future for their children.

Building Hope was awarded the prestigious Lone Star Audience Award after the film’s premiere at the SXSW Film Festival.

The film includes appearances by Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai, Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, and Kenyan youth counselor, Auma Obama, sister of President Barack Obama. Music by: Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Eliza Gilkyson, Kat Emondson and Ayub Ogada.

‘Inspirational Red Bull for the humanitarian soul and proof positive that you – yes, you – can help fix our broken world and make a difference in the lives of countless others.’ - The Austin Chronicle

‘Building Hope is an inspiring documentary that not only builds hope for the youth of Kenya, but also empowers people thousands of miles away to affect change through small yet significant contributions.’ - Slackerwood.com

View the trailer for Building Hope at: www.nobelity.org

100% of The Nobelity Project’s proceeds from the Violet Crown screenings June 3 - June 9 benefit their Kenya Schools Fund, building classrooms, libraries, computer labs and water systems at rural Kenyan schools.

Top Action: Ask Your Member of Congress to Take Action on GAVI

Time is running short. The GAVI pledging conference is on June 13 in London. Can we get Congress to communicate to the president and his administration that the U.S. must go to London with a powerful request? The answer lies in your boldness in the coming weeks. How bold will you be?

Opportunity: Save 4.2 million children’s lives by 2015 with two new vaccinations to protect against rotavirus and pneumonia. With adequate funding, GAVI will make these new vaccinations available to kids in 44 countries. We need a three-year pledge totaling $450 million from the U.S. This pledge represents less than one-fifth of the overall need. The rest will come from other sources.

Some members of Congress will tell you that these are tough times and that we cannot continue spending money. We need to remind them that we elect them to lead and that all spending is not equal. Some spending cuts will result in tighter budgets, delayed projects, or less waste. Very few expenditures can promise to save millions of lives.

Here’s what you can do:

• WE NEED LEADERSHIP on a SIGN-ON LETTER to President Obama. Ask your member of Congress to become the lead sponsor of a bi-partisan sign-on letter to the president. You can send him/her this draft letter as a starter. If you need help making your request, please contact Ken Patterson or Lisa Marchal. We’d like President Obama to receive bi-partisan letters from both the Senate and the House with lots of signatures on them showing support for a bold U.S. pledge.
• Ask your member to send their own letter to the president. If your member of Congress is not willing to lead on a letter, ask him/her to write their own letter using our draft letter as a starting place.
• Generate media. Send our editorial packet to your local paper and ask them to write about GAVI. Or write your own write a letter to the editor using our online tool. For examples, see what activists Beth Wilson, Caroline Fleming, Nancy Gardiner, Ken Patterson, and Martha Clemons got published this weekend.
• Write to your member of Congress about GAVI and encourage others to do the same. Use our action alert to write to your member of Congress about the need to fund GAVI adequately in 2012 so that the world can undertake this critical vaccine initiative.