UNIVERSITY COALITIONS for GLOBAL HEALTH

Hey UCGHers!

Today is Youth AIDS Day, and people and groups around the country need you to take five minutes to help pass legislation that will save millions of lives worldwide. In the next few weeks, Congress will consider reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, President Bush’s 2003 proposal to treat 2 million people with AIDS and prevent 7 million HIV infections by the end of 2008. This plan expires at the end of this year, and must be continued.

There are two things you can do today to make sure this PEPFAR legislation passes:

First, email your Members of Congress and ask them to support reauthorization of the US Global AIDS Initiative (PEPFAR)?

Second, please call Senator Lugar (202) 224-4814, the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is drafting the Senate bill at this time, and ask him to support a bill modeled on the one that is being considered by the House?

Click here to send an email to your Member of Congress. Then, call Senator Lugar at (202) 224-4814. Here’s a sample script, but you should feel free to modify it:
“Hi, my name is _______ and I’m from ___(organization)___. Today is Youth AIDS Day, and I’m calling to encourage Senator Lugar to work with Senator Biden to craft a bill to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. President Bush began this program in 2003, and it has been an immense success and must continue. But we need to make sure that we do the most good possible, and I hope Senator Lugar can support a bill that continues the progress President Bush started - the bill should include $50 billion over five years in funding, an end to the abstinence-only funding earmark, treatment for four million people, and train 140,000 new healthcare workers to address the key bottleneck to treating the people we’ve promised to treat in Africa.”
The PEPFAR reauthorization bill currently in the House includes $50 billion over five years, which is sufficient funding to treat one-third of people in need of treatment worldwide, begin to address the dire shortage of healthcare workers, treat and prevent TB and malaria, the leading killers of people with AIDS, and prevent HIV with evidence-based programs.

Your Member of Congress and Senator Lugar (202) 224-4814 need to hear from you that this bill must pass in order to save the most number of lives.

Around the country, hundreds of thousands of people are waking up and seeing this email in their inbox. Each person is given an opportunity to take action; to do something to make sure that every person living with HIV has access to treatment to save their lives, and every person at risk for HIV infection has the tools needed to prevent infection. But of these hundreds of thousands of people, how many will take action? Knowledge is only power when you use that knowledge to win changes in the lives of people around the world. Will you be one of the people who take action?

Can we count on you to email your Member of Congress and call Senator Lugar (202) 224-4814 today to ensure that the US Global AIDS Plan is reauthorized, with the best possible language so that we do the most good around the world?

Thank you for your hard work,

ActionAid USA
Advocates for Youth
American Medical Student Association
Americans for Informed Democracy
Global AIDS Alliance
Health GAP
Physicians for Human Rights
RESULTS
Student Global AIDS Campaign
University Coalitions for Global Health

PS- The House Committee on Foreign Affairs votes on PEPFAR reauthorization on Wednesday, Feb. 27th. On Thursday, Feb. 28th at 8pm ET and again on Friday, Feb. 29th at 2pm ET, we will be hosting a conference call to update everyone on the status of the bill, and what steps to take next. Please join us to learn how you can continue to take action to make sure this important piece of legislation passes. At the start time, call in to 800-505-4464 and type the passcode 951678# to join the call.
PPS- To learn more about this bill and all the good provisions that are included, click here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 10:08 am and is filed under Events, HIV/AIDS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.