UNIVERSITY COALITIONS for GLOBAL HEALTH

Hey UCGH!

This morning, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee marked up and approved the Lantos/Hyde Leadership Against AIDS, TB, Malaria Act of 2008 by a vote of 18-3. Though we have not seen the final bill that passed through committee, we understand that the bill is still a $50 billion bill, including $9 billion for TB and malaria. Thank you to all of you who were able call your Senator yesterday and ask them to retain the $50 billion-you’re voices were heard today at the Committee mark up!

Because of all of your amazing efforts we now have a U.S. Global AIDS Bill that has passed committee in both the House and the Senate! But we still need your help, especially as Congress gets ready to go on recess from March 15-30. This is a great time for all to go out and do in district lobby visits to make sure that when the bill hits the Senate and House floor for a vote after March 30th that your Congressional Member will vote in favor of this awesome bill! Please get out there and help us pass this bill-we’re almost there!

To learn more about in district lobby visits check out http://www.ucgh.org/resources/toolkit-center/ucgh-action-guide/contacting-politicians/

The only amendment offered today in the Senate mark up was a managers’ amendment. Though most of the provisions relate to the HIV/AIDS section of the bill there is one provision related to malaria (see #9).

The provisions of the managers’ amendment are as follows:

1. Technical amendments to Section 101(f) on Inspectors General (Biden)

2. Alter conscience clause on page 90 to conform to the House bill (Biden/Lugar)

3. Changing “healthcare workers and professionals” to “healthcare paraprofessionals and professionals” in Section 301, changing goal to target, and adding definition of paraprofessionals; elimination of “behavior change” phrase in several places in the bill to conform with House compromise; adjustments to pediatric treatment provisions (Biden)

4. Global Fund — retain current law on timing of measuring Fund contributions for purposes of U.S. limitation of 33 percent (DeMint)

5. Define “structural prevention” (Biden)

6. Create panel on reviewing PMTCT (Dodd)

7. Promote vaccine development (Kerry)

8. Promote microbicide development (Obama)

9. Malaria/ensure CDC surveillance doesn’t duplicate WHO (DeMint)

10. Highlight Caribbean as potential partner for regional approaches to AIDS (Nelson)

11. Sense of the Senate, adding new section 401(b) on the scale-up of the spending over the course of the five fiscal years (Biden/Lugar)

12. Promote pre-service training for health capacity (Cardin)

13. Technical change to insert section 307 (missing by mistake from original bill), and renumbering rest of Title III accordingly (Biden/Lugar)

To learn more about the U.S. Global AIDS Plan visit www.pepfar2.org

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Healthcare Workers, 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.