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Global AIDS Policy in the Age of ObamaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
An excerpt from my piece in the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services This editorial is based on a short trip I took to South Africa earlier this year. April 2009 In 2006, then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michele traveled to Kenya, Obama’s father’s homeland where many of the senator’s extended family still lived. The Obamas publicly took an HIV test during their trip, an important moment as sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis, with more than 2/3 of the world’s infections. For every outspoken leader on HIV/AIDS like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, there have been as many ...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - October 5, 2009 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy AIDS SAfrica Politics Source Type: blogs

Making Markets for Merit GoodsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
with Ethan Kapstein This is from a blog post at the Center for Global Development about a new working paper available at CGD. Sorry it’s been so long for me to post here again, but I hope to channel a few new pieces here periodically. Our research on the political economy of antiretrovirals (ARVs) is motivated by a key puzzle: why were AIDS activists and AIDS policy entrepreneurs successful in putting universal access to treatment on the international agenda when so many other global campaigns–whether in health care or other issue areas like climate change–have either failed or struggled to have much impact. In ...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - October 5, 2009 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Brief comment on Pope Benedict’s “irresponsibility”Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
UNAIDS got into the fray. Let me say that I normally like this pope. At least as much as a non-RC can. But what he said in a one-off comment is more than “irresponsible”, as some have called it. It is a lie and will lead to unneeded deaths among those Benedict says need the world’s most special efforts—the poor.
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 26, 2009 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Nate Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Washington DC is West AfricaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article should put us on high alert. Maybe this is how Michelle Obama could get involved with the family’s new city. HIV/AIDS Rate in D.C. Hits 3% Considered a ‘Severe’ Epidemic, Every Mode of Transmission Is Increasing, City Study Finds By Jose Antonio Vargas and Darryl Fears Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, March 15, 2009; A01 At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a “generalized and severe” epidemic, according to a report scheduled to be released by health officials tomorrow. That translate...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 15, 2009 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Nate Tags: Epidemiology Research/Resources Source Type: blogs

War on Drugs also war on anti-HIV effortsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Well, this will just cause all sorts of problems. And before anyone lectures me about the morality of drug legalization or illegalization, what I care most about is keeping people from getting HIV. “Harm reduction” (which includes things like needle exchange) is the best we’ve got right now. If we can figure out a better way that coincidentally legalizes or bans drugs, I’ll be for that. U.N. Anti-Drug Efforts Contributing to Spread of HIV, Advocates Say Members of the United Nations this week are expected to sign a declaration to extend a “war on drugs,” a policy that some critics arg...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 11, 2009 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Nate Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

End of an Era – A High-Water Mark in AIDS funding?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The pending Wall Street bailout reminds us that the buoyant global economy of recent years created permissive conditions for international altruism on global health and development. With America’s economy staggering, the effects are being felt further afield among other major industrialized economies, the UK included. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has for more than a decade, been one of the stalwart supporters of funding for global development now faces economic troubles at home and a political crisis. Under the Labour Party, UK foreign assistance soared. In 2007, the UK surpassed the United States as the largest ...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 22, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

End of an Era - A High-Water Mark in AIDS funding?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The pending Wall Street bailout reminds us that the buoyant global economy of recent years created permissive conditions for international altruism on global health and development. With America’s economy staggering, the effects are being felt further afield among other major industrialized economies, the UK included. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has for more than a decade, been one of the stalwart supporters of funding for global development now faces economic troubles at home and a political crisis. Under the Labour Party, UK foreign assistance soared. In 2007, the UK surpassed the United States as the largest ...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 21, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

PEPFAR reauthorization signing ceremonyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
As the global AIDS community prepares for the conference beginning Sunday in Mexico City, President Bush is signing the reauthorization bill for PEPFAR today. It has been named after Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde, Democratic and Republican members of Congress who passed away within the past year. When Elizabeth Dole attempted to name the bill for recently deceased Senator Jesse Helms, there was much backlash, given Helms’ early opposition in the 80’s and 90’s to AIDS spending, a disease he saw as a result of deviant behavior. Helms would go on to have a near deathbed conversion to support the cause of HIV/AID...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - July 30, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Senate moves on PEPFAR ReauthorizationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Senate voted 65-3 on a cloture motion on PEPFAR reauthorization last Friday. Here’s a story in today’s Times about PEPFAR reauthorization. More details on Kaiser. Looks like Sen. Jim Demint made an ass of himself before his colleagues on Friday when he insisted on a Friday evening procedural vote on cloture and then didn’t show up. He called for cutting the bill’s pricetag down to $35bn. In so doing, he likely ensured that the full $50 billion gets appropriated (which was more than what the President wanted). The bill no longer has a mandate that 55% of funding be spent on treatment (which was p...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - July 14, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Global health reportingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (supported by the Gates Foundation) hosts this site of news sources on global health, including upcoming events. I will add to the blogroll but here is the link to globalhealthreporting.org.
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - June 2, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Resources Source Type: blogs

Japan announces $560mn contribution to the Global FundEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In advance of the Hokkaido G8 summit in July, Japan just announced last week a new contribution to the Global Fund of $560mn, spread out over an unspecified period of years. This is the second reasonably large pledged contribution from Japan since then Prime Minister Koizumi pledged $500mn back in 2005. Here is summary from the Kaiser Foundation’s news archive: Japan on Friday announced that it had pledged $560 million to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, AFP/Google.com reports. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said the funds will be allocated “in the coming years” from 2009, but he di...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - June 1, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

PEPFAR Reauthorization in DangerEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Just when it looked like PEPFAR would be reauthorized and that Congress would appropriate even more money than the president asked for, seven Senators, led by Tom Coburn of Oklahoma (along with Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, David Vitter, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr), have placed a hold on the bill, dramatically reducing the chances that it will pass this Congress. A hold is an obscure procedure in the U.S. Senate that enables any Senator to stop a bill that they do not like by preventing it from coming to the floor. Michael Gerson, Bush’s former speechwriter, flagged this egregious action to set up an int...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - May 14, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

The AIDS Entitlement Crisis?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Mead Over of the Center of Global Development has a new paper, identifying a problem I wrote about before (see here). Unless the U.S. government gets a handle on AIDS prevention, the extension of ARV therapy will consume a larger and larger share of U.S. foreign assistance. In effect, we have created an external entitlement for foreigners. In the worst case scenario, a disruption in our funding would consign those people to death. Right now, the political support for sustained and increased spending is strong. However, as the pricetag rises for an ever larger population of people sick enough to need ARVs, the U.S. governme...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - May 7, 2008 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Global Fund replenishmentEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Economist has a great story on the replenishment process for the Global Fund that is happening in Berlin. I am a big supporter of treatment, but here is the nub of the issue, which gets back to the notion of an open-ended lifetime entitlement that Western donors are providing for those infected with HIV. The problem with AIDS is that the more successful you are at treating it, the more you end up paying. That is because, unlike malaria and tuberculosis, it is incurable. Once someone is infected with HIV, the virus that causes it, they will end up requiring treatment for life. UNAIDS has a new report that examines three...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 28, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Review of Amy Patterson’s book on AIDS in AfricaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I’ve blogged a bit about the book before (see here), but here is my review of Amy Patterson’s book on AIDS in Africa that just appeared in Political Science Quarterly (here is a link to the PDF). The Politics of AIDS in Africa by Amy S. Patterson. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. 226 pp. Cloth, $52.00; paper, $19.95. Amy Patterson’s book provides an informative look at the AIDS epidemic in Africa that is likely to appeal to both specialists and readers new to the topic. She paints a portrait of indifference among most African leaders and of suffering publics distracted by poverty and other grave p...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 18, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Frist is not the Senator from Matobo*…Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Senator Frist is back in the news this past week for his laudable involvement in Save the Children. Save the Children has joined a new One initiative calling for an increase in US foreign aid for mothers and children of low-income countries. Laudable certainly but a bit disappointing too when I read this in the NYTimes [Sept 7, “Ex-Senator to Lead Global Drive on Children’s Health“]… Save the Children hopes Mr. Frist will open doors, and it is still in the process of recruiting senior Democratic leaders, to make its appeal bipartisan. “The children and mothers who die are in huts beyo...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 13, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Bono Made Bill Frist Cry, too! - 2008 Elections and Child SurvivalEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In homage to a paper I wrote on the Jubilee 2000 campaign, a colleague of mine sent me this article in the Times about Bill Frist, the former Tennessee Senator and ex Repub majority leader, who is leading a new initiative to seek more U.S. funding for child survival. Frist, as you know, is a trained medical doctor and has long been interested in global public health. He and Jesse Helms were champions of greater U.S. action on AIDS. Frist had a pretty good reputation on these issues until he squandered his political capital by demagoguing on Terri Schiavo. But I digress…. The other interesting part of the story is how...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 9, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Cost-Benefit, Oster, and AIDSEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Picking up the theme Ben mentioned earlier, economist Emily Oster suggests (see our prior blog post here) that exports helped determine the rate of diffusion of AIDS in Uganda. As prices of Ugandan coffee exports declined, men had less pocket money which made it harder for them to have more sexual partners. This view actually could make it possible for Helen Epstein’s arguments on concurrency to co-exist with Oster’s work, as the Center for Global Development argues. They suggest that there could be a problem of people having multiple sexual partners and also true that export price fluctuations might alter how ...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 3, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Epidemiology Source Type: blogs

Renewed institutional support for innovation in HIV preventionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This is reposted in full from the Lancet blog post of Aug 23th, “US$14 million grant for HIV prevention campaign”. The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition is launching a new organization to promote the development of a wide variety of HIV prevention strategies, including microbicides and oral preventive drugs. The launch of the new organization, called The HIV Prevention Research Advocacy Network, was announced by AVAC Tuesdsy, Aug 21 in Seattle at the AIDS Vaccine 2007 conference. The initiative will be funded by five-year, US$14 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation According to the press rel...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 3, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Research/Resources Advocacy Academic Groups Science and Technology Source Type: blogs

U.S. AIDS funding disbursement gapEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Jennifer Kates of the Kaiser Family Foundation and her collaborators found that in 2006, the U.S. promised much more for global AIDS funding than it disbursed for the second year in a row. In fact, the U.S. only disbursed 56% of bilateral funds that were promised. In 2006, the U.S. committed $2,362.8mn but only disbursed $1,320.9mn. In 2005, the U.S. committed $1,918mn but disbursed only $1,095mn. The U.S. was still the largest donor, contributing more than 44% of bilateral donations in that year, but it does raise questions. Is the gap a problem with U.S. overpromising or insufficient absorptive capacity in recipient coun...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 3, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Money for nothin and chicks for free?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This story ran in the Washington Post on July 13th [”In Zimbabwe, Fewer Affairs and Less HIV“], but it recently came up in conversation and I realized I hadn’t posted it… doing so now. It follows neatly on Epstein’s concurrency thesis. CHITUNGWIZA, Zimbabwe — It’s not only the prices of bread and eggs that are out of control in Zimbabwe, land of 4,000 percent inflation. For the man inclined to cheat on his wife, these are trying times. Keeping a mistress, visiting a prostitute or even taking a girlfriend out for beers is simply becoming too expensive, men say. But their strain is Z...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - September 3, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Epidemiology Source Type: blogs

Easterly’s review of Helen Epstein’s new bookEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Bill Easterly has a review of Helen Epstein’s new book in the New York Review of Books. (This follows another largely favorable review in the New York Times). The New York Review has been a frequent outlet of her work which we have written about. Her book summarizes a lot of her pathbreaking reporting on “concurrency,” the pattern in Africa of having multiple long-term sexual partners which is, unfortunately, a tremendous vehicle for the spread of HIV. Epstein’s has mainstreamed the acceptance of concurrency as a real problem. Unfortunately, the politics of prevention has gotten hung up on unproduct...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - August 27, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Bush Administration to fund male circumcisionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We’ve post on this before, but male circumcision is getting more support from the Bush Administration as a prevention strategy in the fight against AIDS (see here and here). From today’s Washington Post: Circumcision funding would be small at first, with budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for individual countries. The cells in the foreskin of a penis are especially vulnerable to HIV, and removing the foreskin makes a man about 60 percent less likely to contract the virus, studies in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda have shown. In Kenya, men from the Luo tribe, which does not circumcise its boys, have...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - August 19, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Male circumcision as foreign policyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The Council on Foreign Relations held its first of several rounds on the role of health technologies in US foreign policy. Laurie Garrett led the discussion with Ambassador Mark Dybul and New York Health Commissioner Tom Frieden. The full video is available on the CFR site. I’d be curious to hear what others think but I came away with the general sense that Dybul and by extension the PEPFAR program do not appreciate the significance of male circumcision as HIV prevention. Several times Dybul pointed to slides (which hopefully the CFR video editor will post…) with WHO mathematical models that showed the HIV epid...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - May 13, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Politics and Policy Science and Technology Source Type: blogs

AIDS forum at the University of TexasEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Last week, three professors at the University of Texas, including me, discussed the state of debate on AIDS prevention and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. James Wilson of the History Department and I debated whether or not male circumcision could possibly help reduce incidence of new infections. My take is that we should try whatever works. Prevention I suggested is hard. Changing people’s sexual behavior is very difficult. People won’t abstain in sufficient numbers. Women can’t insist that their sexual partners use condoms. Therefore, it may be necessary to turn to technological solutions like circumcis...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - May 3, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

David Gartner, Global AIDS Alliance, VideoEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
I recently hosted David Gartner, Policy Director of the Global AIDS Alliance, at UT-Austin at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He addressed the issue of the role of advocacy for global public health and talked about the achievements and challenges for addressing the AIDS crisis. The video is available here. Gartner talks about the degree to which the expansion of donor commitment to HIV/AIDS would not have happened without NGO action. He also addresses the remaining challenges in addressing HIV/AIDS, particularly with respect to prevention.
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - April 26, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy NGOs and IOs Source Type: blogs

Developing a basic package of preventive care in UgandaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This is a couple of years old but the idea resonates with more recent calls for horizontal programming to meet the wider health needs of populations with high HIV prevalence. The CDC created the Basic Preventive Care Program, recently mentioned again in the KaiserNetwork news summary. In the last few years, there has been a substantial increase in funding for HIV programmes, but how can antiretroviral treatment be delivered in a setting where few people have access to even the most basic health care? “To begin to cope with providing HIV care in this context” said Dr. Mermin “we felt that i...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 30, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

AIDS in Brazil at Harvard, Panel 2Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Panel II: A Comparative Look at the Brazilian Response to AIDS Panelists: Varun Gauri, Senior Economist. Development Research Group, World Bank João Biehl, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University; author of Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival (Princeton Univ. Press, forthcoming). Cristina d’Almeida, National Agency for Research on AIDS, France Moderator: Eduardo Gómez, Politics and Governance Group, Harvard School of Public Health; dissertation: “Contested Epidemics: Institution, Global Politics and Response in the United States and Brazil Varun Guari, “Institutio...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 22, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Nate Tags: Events Past, Present, and Future Politics and Policy AIDS HIV research social science Source Type: blogs

AIDS in Brazil at Harvard, Panel 1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Panel I: Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research on HIV/AIDS in Brazil Panelists: David Martin, Harvard College 07 Amy Nunn, ScD, Harvard School of Public Health, dissertation: “The Politics of Life and Death: A Historical Institutional Analysis of Antiretroviral Drug Policy in Brazil”; Corporate Relations Manager, Global Business Coalition on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Sophia Zamudio-Haas, M.S. Candidate in Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. Moderator: Lorena Barberia, Program Associate, Brazil Office, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Amy Nunn: Gl...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 22, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Nate Tags: Events Past, Present, and Future Politics and Policy AIDS conferences HIV research Source Type: blogs

The shape of things to come…Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The global call for the integration of HIV services into routine healthcare delivery has taken on a new emphasis in San Francisco. The KaiserNetwork reported today the following: San Francisco’s Office of AIDS is being dismantled and its functions will be distributed throughout the city’s Department of Public Health to address a reduction in federal funds and the “ever-changing nature” of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The office is responsible for about $65 million in AIDS programs, many of them funded by federal grants, the Chronicle reports. According to Jimmy L...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 16, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

A sort of PSA: Donate computation time to The GridEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
OK, so this is a bit of a public service announcement, but I just wanted to give a shout out to anyone with a computer that may be often idle. You know you’re the one if you’ve got a slick new machine and it basically is a fancy web browser and text editor with occasional number crunching during the dissertation or that last field report … Consider donating that down time to the World Community Grid. The World Community Grid has been operating in its current form since November 2005 (you can read about the 2005 launch in the KaiserNetwork archives). They run a few extremely large research effo...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 14, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Scientists Discover ‘Natural Barrier’ to HIVEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
‘Natural Barrier’ to HIVMarch 5, 2007 By E.J. Mundell Researchers have discovered that cells in the mucosal lining of human genitalia produce a protein that “eats up” invading HIV -- possibly keeping the spread of the AIDS more contained than it might otherwise be. Even more important, enhancing the activity of this protein, called Langerin, could be a potent new way to curtail the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS, the Dutch scientists added. Langerin is produced by Langerhans cells, which form a web-like network in skin and mucosa. This network is one of the first structures HIV confronts...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 12, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Epidemiology Science and Technology Source Type: blogs

Global AIDS fund wants more private donor moneyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
05 Mar 2007 16:22:21 GMTSource: Reuters By John Acher OSLO, March 5 (Reuters) - A global fund that combats AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria hopes to attract more money from private donors, fund officials said on Monday. Launched in 2002 with the backing of then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has raised $10 billion but is looking to raise a further $15 billion in 2008-2010. So far about 96 percent of the Fund’s money has come from governments, including the G8 countries, but private sources, such as corporations, foundations and individuals, should provide more...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 12, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

RED campaign earns just $18mnEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In a worrisome portent, it appears that the RED campaign may be more hype than substance. As you may recall, Bono’s RED campaign links the purchase of products--sunglasses, cell phones, shirts, jeans--to proceeds for the Global Fund. It was launched in the US (after an earlier UK launch) with much fanfare in the fall with an Oprah special, lots of ads, etc. The ad costs may be greater than the actual revenue the Global Fund derives from the proceeds. Moreover, it may be the kind of philanthropic cover for large firms that divert attention from more direct ways of giving. It’s interesting to see that private giv...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - March 5, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Uganda: Medics Want Circumcision Added to ABCEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(via AllAfrica.com)Feb 27 Jane NafulaKampala MEDICS have asked the government to integrate medical circumcision for men into the ABC strategy to further contain the spread of HIV. The ABC strategy is being used in Uganda to control the HIV/Aids epidemic by promoting abstinence, faithfulness, and condom use. However, some medics and other professionals are now pushing for the integration of men’s circumcision into the strategy to further contain the spread of the condition. Researchers recently found out that people circumcised at reputable health centres were less likely to contract the virus than their uncircumcised...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - February 27, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: Ben Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

The next advocacy campaignEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There is an emerging debate in healthy advocacy about the wisdom of focusing funding so much on fighting a few diseases. Is AIDS money truly additional money that would not have gone for other purposes or is AIDS taking money out of child survival, maternal health and other worthy areas of expenditure? (Jeremy Shiffman of the Center for Global Development and Laurie Garrett have both made this argument in recent months as we blogged about here, here). CGD’s Nandini Ooman takes up this argument again in a recent post: So, what is it that drives HIV/AIDS funding at the expense of other health priorities? If this is a r...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - February 7, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs

Dem’s coming round on HIV/AIDS fundingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Well, in what I’m sure was a direct response to criticism by blogs like this one (joke!) that the Democrats were about to underfund U.S. contributions to the fight against AIDS, Democratic leaders in Congress are starting to put more money into the budget. The Times reported on February 2nd that: But the new Democratic leadership agreed this week to give the administration $4.5 billion this year to combat the big three global pandemics, $500 million more than the president himself had requested and over $1 billion more than if the undertakings had been required to continue at the previous year’s spending levels. Th...
Source: Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS - February 6, 2007 Category: HIV AIDS Authors: joshbusby Tags: Politics and Policy Source Type: blogs