We can help save teachers, doctors, nurses, workers, and families
HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are devastating entire communities and economies. Poor countries are losing their teachers, doctors and nurses. Businesses are losing their workers. Governments are losing their civil servants. Families are losing their breadwinners.
TB kills an estimated 2 million people each year and is the leading cause of death for people with AIDS.
At least 1 million people die from malaria each year, mostly children in Africa.
AIDS is the world’s fourth leading cause of death. Since first being reported in 1981, AIDS has killed over 25 million people. AIDS killed an estimated 3 million people in 2006 alone.
Globally, 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. 12 million of those live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Proven, cost-effective strategies can prevent and treat these diseases
Antiretroviral medication used to treat people living with HIV/AIDS costs as little as $140 per patient per year, down from nearly $10,000 a year less than 10 years ago.
TB can be fully cured with effective treatment that costs as little as $16 per person for the full treatment course (six to eight months) with a success rate of up to 80% in the poorest countries. TB treatment is also one of the best ways to find those who are HIV positive and keep them alive.
Malaria can be all but eliminated through four highly successful interventions: insecticide treated bed nets, indoor residual spraying, preventative treatment for pregnant women, and treatment for those already infected. It costs as little as $2 to purchase the most effective malaria treatments.
We can save 16,000 lives every day
The internationally agreed upon goal is to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria. Based on current estimates, meeting this goal would result in approximately 16,000 lives saved every day. U.S. leadership in fighting these three diseases must continue through a coordinated approach that utilizes both bilateral and multilateral tools. The ultimate goal should be to provide 1/3 of the global funding requirements for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria and achieve universal access to prevention, care and treatment for all three diseases by 2015. To accomplish this end, we need:
Additional funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and bilateral TB programs, and other programs that integrate treatment of HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
Providing the U.S. fair share for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria is critical in the fight against these three diseases.
Funding is also needed to address a recent outbreak of “extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis” (XDR-TB) in South Africa, which if unchecked, threatens to reverse progress made in recent years in HIV/AIDS treatment and curing TB.
