UNIVERSITY COALITIONS for GLOBAL HEALTH

Last year Malgorzata Malak participated in a 3-month internship in a local Mozambican organization, Kindlimuka in August – November.  During the internship, together with her tandem partner, Verena Allinger, they made a documentary about HIV/AIDS issue in Mozambique.

The film is called “Vida Positiva” and is an outline of the situation including reasons for HIV spread, national combat strategies, projects run by NGOs, ways of treating the disease and personal stories of HIV positive people and their relatives.

The film is available at: http://mlume.com/vida

Hello readers!  Wondering what President Obama has been up to in his first days in office?  Check out this article from The Guardian! 

by, Daniel Nasaw

President Barack Obama today made the most contentious move of his young administration with an order, overturning a ban on federal funds to foreign family planning organisations that either offer abortions or provide information or counselling about abortion.

The rule change continues the dismantling of George Bush’s conservative policies. It is likely to encounter fierce criticism from the still robust anti-abortion movement.

It will allow US aid, usually through the US agency for international development, to flow to HIV/Aids clinics, birth-control providers and other organisations that advocate or provide counselling about abortion across the world. It is known as the “global gag rule” because it denies US taxpayer dollars to clinics that even mention abortion to women with unplanned pregnancies.

The rule was signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, overturned by Bill Clinton in 1993, and reinstated by Bush. Critics of the rule say it deprives the world’s poor women of desperately needed medical care, while proponents say US tax dollars should not promote abortion.

Family planning groups in America and the UK cheered the rule change. Dr Gill Greer, director general of London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, estimated the gag rule had cost the group more than $100m for family planning and sexual and reproductive health programmes during the eight years of the Bush administration, which she said amounted to 36 million unplanned pregnancies and 15 million induced abortions.

“The gag rule has done immense harm and caused untold suffering to millions around the world,” she said in a statement. “It has undermined health systems and endangered the lives and health of the poorest and most vulnerable women on the planet by denying access to life saving family planning, sexual and reproductive health and HIV services and exposing them to the dangers of unsafe abortion.

“While Obama has spent the first two days of his presidency overturning Bush policies, for example restricting US interrogation practices of terror suspects and an order pledging to close the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, those were backed by a broad political consensus. Abortion, however, remains a bitterly contentious issue, as evidenced by the thousands of people who marched in Washington yesterday opposing abortion rights.

Yesterday was the 36th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s right to choose abortion.

While both Clinton and Bush used the Roe v Wade anniversary to change US policy on abortion, Obama declined yesterday. He instead issued a statement reaffirming his commitment “to protecting a woman’s right to choose”.

“On the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters,” he said.

The rule comes as no surprise. During the president campaign Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state will oversee foreign aid, pledged to end the rule.

The rule change “would be huge,” California Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado told National Public Radio. “By the US restricting women’s rights to reproductive planning internationally, it really destroys their lives. Because they can’t control the size of their family, that affects their use of resources and food and child nutrition and so many other things. The way to increase the stability in Third World countries, frankly, is for sensible family planning.”

PEPFAR is probably not a term most people in the United States hear every day, but around the world, PEPFAR has become one of our nation’s most successful ambassadors. The initials stand for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. People in developing countries, particularly in Africa, know it means life-saving help. In the 15 countries that PEPFAR serves, U.S. approval ratings are among the highest anywhere in the world.

Congress is considering reauthorization of the U.S. PEPFAR for another five years, yet, sadly, the bill has stalled in the Senate. It is urgent that the Senate move this forward, not only for the sake of the millions of people in need of lifesaving AIDS medication, or the millions of orphans the AIDS pandemic has left in its wake, but also because of the value PEPFAR has to the U.S. in shaping and improving the way the rest of the world sees us. The children of today will not forget that PEPFAR saved their mothers with antiretroviral medicine or helped provide skills training for their transformation into adulthood when there were no other options. The $50 billion price tag is clearly worth the money in lives saved, and the goodwill PEPFAR brings to the U.S. in the eyes of other nations has a value that should not be underestimated.

What will become of the children orphaned by AIDS if PEPFAR is not fully funded? In communities across the globe heavily impacted by AIDS and poverty children face challenges every day that no child should ever have to consider. Too many must ask: Should I go to school, or, instead, stay at home to find food and care for my family? Orphans and vulnerable children are far more susceptible to a host of dangers than children with healthy parents and stable communities to care for them. These dangers include being forcibly recruited into a rebel army, a child sex trafficking ring, or child labor. So, we must realize that if we invest in the future of these children now we make everyone’s future a better, safer place.

While 10 percent of PEPFAR funding is dedicated to assisting orphans and vulnerable children, the bill will also help keep children from being orphaned in the first place. PEPFAR is, in effect, “orphan prevention.” PEPFAR improves the future for the world’s children and is an effective use of taxpayer dollars.

Some may say that foreign aid is a waste of money, but tell that to the 1.4 million people receiving life-saving antiretroviral medicine through the U.S. program, enabling parents to care for their children and pass down important lessons and traditions. PEPFAR provides care to millions of aunts, uncles and neighbors allowing them to go to the office, till the fields and be productive, contributing members of society. It has built health-care infrastructure increasing the number of doctors and nurses to keep communities healthy. It creates lasting, widespread goodwill towards the U.S. among the nations and the people it helps. Helping children means keeping parents alive, communities thriving and holding the social fabric of societies together. Children everywhere have a better shot at life and make better choices when they have parents to guide them, healthy communities and stable nations to grow up in.

A great deal is at stake as the Senate is considering the reauthorization of PEPFAR. It is a moment when the support of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and leadership of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is critical. They and the rest of the Senate should pass this bill and do so quickly for President Bush to use it to leverage other countries to also give more in effective aid when the G-8 meets in Japan this July. The $50 billion for PEPFAR might be seen as an investment in developing countries; however, it is actually a key investment in the future for the United States and the rest of the world. by Jennifer Deleny

Hi folks– a much needed PEPFAR update from Pete at Physicians for Human Rights! Read below for the full scope or check out Pete’s blog.

As you may know, the House of Representatives has already passed their version of the PEPFAR program. The next step in the process for the bill to become law (think schoolhouse rock) is for the Senate to pass their version of the bill. Any differences between the two bills will be sorted out in a conference committee, made up of key stakeholders from the House and Senate, which then sends the bill to the President to sign into law.

We still have a big fight ahead of us to get the best possible bill signed into law. Unfortunately, a group of fiscal conservatives in the Senate, led by Tom Coburn (R-OK), are using a procedural hold to stop the bill from going to the floor of the Senate. Michael Gerson has written a great op-ed in the Washington Post, which explains:

The seven, led by Coburn, complain that the reauthorization is too costly. They object to “mission creep”—the funding of “food, water, treatment of other infectious diseases, gender empowerment programs, poverty alleviation programs”—as though people surviving on AIDS treatment do not need to eat, work or get their TB treated. And the senators are concerned that AIDS funds might be used for things such as abortion referrals and needle distribution, though the legislation doesn’t mention these possibilities. So they are pushing for the extension of a superfluous spending mandate requiring that at least 55 percent of PEPFAR resources be used for treatment, on the theory that this will starve “feckless or morally dubious” prevention programs.

Gerson emphasizes that there is no way to control the epidemic with treatment alone.

Given that there are about 2.5 new HIV infections for every person starting on AIDS drugs, there is no way to control the pandemic through treatment alone. And because treatment is less expensive than it used to be, PEPFAR is meeting its treatment goal for less money. The 55 percent treatment floor would force the program to waste money in pursuit of an arbitrary, nonsensical spending target— the worst kind of congressional earmark.

The implementation of PEPFAR has shattered the old conceptions that it is simply too expensive to treat people with AIDS. We’ve also learned over the last 5 years that ABC only prevention strategies tie the hands of implementers on the ground and do not work, especially not for women who now comprise 60% of those living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

As I’ve noted before, the current versions of the House and Senate bills are based on series of compromises—some of which are good and some of which are not so good. One area we are fighting for improvement on is the integration of family planning services with HIV/AIDS services as a crucial way to give women access to care. In partnership with other AIDS advocacy organizations, we are working on several fronts to ensure that PEPFAR incorporate evidence- and human rights-based prevention and treatment programs.

Watch your in boxes for some new opportunities to help PHR’s Health Action AIDS Campaign in these efforts by contacting your Senators.

Update 5/16:

Senator Coburn (R-OK), one of the leaders of the current opposition to the speedy passage of PEPFAR, has posted a response to Gerson’s article.

Hi Folks-sorry for the lapse in blogs, life has been very busy with UCGH at the moment. Good news is our friend, Rachel Swanson from UNICEF offered to update us all on the situation in Myanmar. Thanks Rachel! (read below or check out Rachel’s blog)

The situation for children continues to worsen in Myanmar as thousands of children have been separated from their families, many more are living in desperate conditions in relief camps, and some are drinking water from ponds covered with dead bodies.

Below, a man collects wood near the carcass of a cow killed by the cyclone, some 50 kilometres south-west of the township of Kunyangon. As bodies decompose, the water supply is further contaminated.

Here, a woman breastfeeds her infant in the temporary shelter of a monastery near the village of Pyanpon in the southern Irrawaddy Division. Behind them, another woman and child share the same bed. They have all been displaced by the cyclone.

UNICEF has distributed pre-positioned supplies to hard-hit areas. Below, a man secures a UNICEF aid package to the back of his bicycle, with the help of his two sons, in the cyclone-affected township of Kunyangon in the southern Yangon Division.

More to follow.

In the meantime, if you want to help, please consider making a donation or posting a badge on your website or blog.

Thank you for your support.

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Posted by Alisa Aydin, UNICEF USA on May 12, 2008 7:44 AM
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