Despite a proposed 5%, or $2 billion reduction in overall foreign operations funding from last year’s Appropriations, House bill would maintain global AIDS funding at last year’s levels to continue strong U.S. support for respected lifesaving global AIDS programs like PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; this is in stark contrast to the Obama Administration’s requested reduction in AIDS funding.
WASHINGTON (May 21, 2012)—Fundação de Assistência Médica para AIDS (AHF), which provides AIDS care and treatment services to more than 170,000 individuals in 26 countries worldwide, lauded the U.S. House of Representatives for budgeting $193 million more to global AIDS programs in the 2013 Foreign Operations & Appropriations Bill than President Obama proposed. Despite a 5%, or $2 billion reduction in overall foreign operations spending from the Fiscal Year 2012 Appropriations Bill, the House budget would maintain current levels of funding. This is in stark contrast to the Administration’s unprecedented request for a reduction in global AIDS funding.
“AHF would like to thank Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) for her continuing leadership on this issue, and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) for showing that a strong response to the global AIDS epidemic has strong bipartisan support. In this House bill, funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief remains at its 2012 level, while under President Obama’s proposed budget, funding and total expenditures for PEPFAR would be reduced, meaning fewer people on treatment and fewer lives saved,” said Tom Myers, AHF’s Chief of Public Affairs, noting that Rep. Granger is the Chair of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, and Rep. Lowey is the ranking Member of the Subcommittee. “The Subcommittee understands that we cannot achieve the goal of an ‘AIDS free generation’ by cutting global AIDS funding. We are grateful to those legislators working to maintain a priority on AIDS care and treatment programs like PEPFAR, particularly after numerous studies have shown that treatment is the key to controlling the epidemic. And for Congress to do so at a time when the overall Foreign Appropriations budget was cut by over two billion dollars demonstrates an even more impressive commitment to fighting AIDS.”
Financiamento de Operações no Exterior e Dotações Orçamentárias — Ano Fiscal de 2012 vs. Ano Fiscal de 2013
A seguir, um panorama dos níveis de financiamento propostos pelo Congresso e pelo governo, ano a ano:
- Total FY2012 enacted, for both bilateral PEPFAR and Global Fund, $5.543 billion; with PEPFAR accounting for $4.243 billion, and Global Fund at $1.3 billion;
- President Obama’s proposed FY 2013 funding for both programs is $5.35 billion; $3.7 billion for bilateral PEPFAR funding and $1.650 billion for the Global Fund;
- The House FY2013 appropriation is $5.543 billion, in the same proportion as FY2012 enacted. The House bill provides:
- $4,242,860,000 for the bilateral programs, PEPFAR
- $1,300,000,000 for the Global Fund
- $5,542,860,000 TOTAL, which is the same as the FY2012 level and $192,860,000 acima the President’s budget request.
O PEPFAR surgiu do compromisso inovador do Presidente Bush, em seu discurso sobre o Estado da União de 2003, de levar dois milhões de africanos soropositivos e outros a tratamento e prevenir sete milhões de novas infecções por HIV por meio de um programa de cinco anos, financiado pelos EUA, com um orçamento de US$ 15 bilhões. Atualmente, opera em 15 países prioritários e afirma apoiar o tratamento antirretroviral para 1.4 milhão de pessoas em todo o mundo. O PEPFAR tem sido um dos programas humanitários globais de maior sucesso nos últimos anos, fornecendo assistência médica a milhões de pessoas com HIV/AIDS e dando esperança aos 33 milhões de pessoas com HIV/AIDS no mundo.
