Colorado has long been a “center of excellence” for the treatment and cure of tuberculosis. The Denver TB Clinic and the Colorado Department of Health infectious disease department are respected throughout the nation.
Now that multi-drug resistant TB has been spreading around the world, Colorado’s own National Jewish medical center has taken the lead in treating new forms of TB. Coloradoans can be proud of the state’s long tradition of excellence in TB treatment.
Globally, TB, AIDS, and malaria constitute a deadly trio of “diseases of poverty” that continue to devastate impoverished people around the world.
Ten years ago, the world created the Millennium Development Goals with the hope of cutting extreme poverty in half and halting the spread of AIDS, TB, and malaria by 2015. Although we are making progress toward reaching all 8 goals, 2 billion people still live in extreme poverty and nearly 5 million people continue to die each year from AIDS, TB, and malaria.
During his campaign, candidate Obama spoke powerfully about supporting the Millennium Development Goals and making it U.S. policy to play a leadership role in ensuring that the goals are met. But the Obama administration has cut the budget of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the largest and most effective global health organization in the world.
The cuts have placed the Global Fund in the unenviable position of having to tell successful programs they can no longer be funded when their success has brought the world within sight of halting the incidence and reversing the spread of AIDS, TB, and malaria for the first time since the diseases reached pandemic levels.
This is no time to be slowing down the program’s progress. The Global Fund estimates that mother-to-child HIV transmission can be virtually eliminated if the current rate of progress can be maintained. But only a sustained effort by the United States and its world partners will make this happen.
President Obama has a chance to continue the historic U.S. role as the major world leader in global health solutions. Next week, leaders form over 180 countries will gather in New York for the Millennium Development Goals summit to assess progress and next steps to achieve the goals. President Obama will make a major foreign policy address at the summit.
Recently, our own Colorado Representative Dianna DeGette joined with 100 other members of Congress in signing a letter urging President Obama to set the Global Fund budget at $2 billion per year for the next three years. Since the U.S. contribution is matched two-for-one by the other rich countries, this would ensure $6 billion per year for the Fund and would allow it to continue saving millions of lives and to expand its programs to save millions more.
President Obama should seize the opportunity next week at the Millennium Development Goals summit to show the kind of leadership in AIDS, TB, and malaria treatment and prevention that Americans expect from their President. And Congress has the opportunity to help him find a fiscally responsible way to fund the effort within the foreign aid budget so no new funding is required.
Bob Sample is the Colorado coordinator for RESULTS, a grassroots international citizen’s lobby organization dedicated to ending hunger and severe poverty. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
