Saturday, October 26, 2013

Having Launched PEPFAR, George W. Bush Is ‘Greatest Humanitarian’ To Serve U.S. Presidency | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Having Launched PEPFAR, George W. Bush Is ‘Greatest Humanitarian’ To Serve U.S. Presidency | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation


http://kff.org/news-summary/having-launched-pepfar-george-w-bush-is-greatest-humanitarian-to-serve-u-s-presidency/




And now President Barack Hussein Obama is undermining and slowly defunding The successful Life Saving Program launched by George W. Bush.  What would that make him?  The "Greatest Enemy to the Humanitarian Efforts" made by the Greater Man/men preceding him..    (among other things along the same lines of disservice to the United States, Americans, and people worldwide) ...   God willing, he will be halted in his tracks before his path of destruction continues to leave the unthinkable magnitude of human suffering in its wake.  If it's up to the American People to take it in their hands, all Hell will break and it will be the final day for this fake.

There are some voices emerging, in droves, with a heavy weight behind them...  FEMA will need relief when it breaks.  It's the force of nature, and like gravity, it's energy is far greater than any group of mortals with an agenda.  What's Right will prevail..The Plight for what's Good in this World always wins the Fight.




Having Launched PEPFAR, George W. Bush Is ‘Greatest Humanitarian’ To Serve U.S. Presidency

Feb 15, 2013
In a post in Foreign Policy’s “Democracy Lab” blog, Christian Caryl, a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute and the blog’s editor, asks, “Which United States president will go down in history as the greatest humanitarian to have served in the office?” He writes, “I’d suggest that there’s one president whose contribution dwarfs all the others” — George W. Bush. “[O]nly a few Americans have ever heard of PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which President Bush announced in his State of the Union address in 2003,” he continues, noting since PEPFAR’s creation, the U.S. government has invested more than $44 billion through its bilateral programs and the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
“It’s impossible to tell exactly how many lives the program has saved, though Secretary of State John Kerry recently claimed that five million people are alive today because of it. That’s probably as good an estimate as any,” Caryl writes, adding, “So it’s safe to say this one program has been a titanic force for good over the past decade.” He continues, “Bush paved the way for an era in which global health assistance has become a prominent new instrument of U.S. statecraft. After all, spending so much money hasn’t just boosted America’s image among Africans; rolling back the widespread scourge of AIDS has protected social institutions in these countries from degradation and collapse, thus contributing to security and effective governance” (2/14).

What George W. Bush did right

February 21, 2013|By Christian Caryl
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WASHINGTON — — Which United States president will go down in history as the greatest humanitarian to have served in the office? The Republican Herbert Hoover is often known as the "Great Humanitarian" for his work administering famine relief in post-World War I Europe (and Bolshevik Russia) in the 1920s — but he did all that before he actually became president. Others might make the case for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democrat who succeeded Hoover in the White House, whose New Deal initiatives relieved poverty and sickness on a grand scale within the United States.
But I'd suggest that there's one president whose contribution dwarfs all the others. Unlike Hoover, he launched his program while he was in office, and unlike FDR, he received virtually no votes in return, since most of the people who have benefited aren't U.S. citizens. In fact, there are very few Americans around who even associate him with his achievement. Who's this great humanitarian? The name might surprise you: It's George W. Bush.
I should say that I do not belong to the former president's political camp. I strongly disapproved of many of his policies. At the same time, I think it's a tragedy that the foreign policy shortcomings of the Bush administration have conspired to obscure his most positive legacy — not least because it saved so many lives, but because there's so much that Americans and the rest of the world can learn from it. Both his detractors and supporters tend to view his time in office through the lens of the "war on terror" and the policies that grew out of it. By contrast, only a few Americans have ever heard of PEPFAR, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which President Bush announced in his State of the Union address in 2003.
Fast forward a decade, and in his own State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama only briefly mentioned the goal of "realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation" — an allusion to the long-term aim of PEPFAR. Yet Obama's most recent budget proposals actually propose to cut spending on the program. That's a pity. This might have been a good moment to celebrate 10 years of an unprecedented American success in fighting one of the world's most pernicious and destructive diseases.
In his 2003 speech, Bush called upon Congress to sponsor an ambitious program to supply antiretroviral drugs and other treatments to HIV sufferers in Africa. Since then, the U.S. government has spent some $44 billion on the project (a figure that includes $7 billion contributed to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, a multilateral organization). By way of comparison, America's most recent aircraft carrier — which will join the 10 we have in service — is set to cost $26.8 billion. One medical expert calls PEPFAR the "largest financial commitment of any country to global health and to treatment of any specific disease worldwide."
It's impossible to tell exactly how many lives the program has saved, though Secretary of State John Kerry recently claimed that 5 million people are alive today because of it. That's probably as good an estimate as any.
Just to give you an idea of the scale, here are some headline figures from a recent op-ed by U.S. Global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby:

"In 2012 alone, PEPFAR directly supported nearly 5.1 million people on antiretroviral treatment — a threefold increase in only four years; provided antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV to nearly 750,000 pregnant women living with the disease (which allowed approximately 230,000 infants to be born without HIV); and enabled more than 46.5 million people to receive testing and counseling."
So it's safe to say this one program has been a titanic force for good over the past decade. The number of deaths from AIDS has been steadily declining over the past few years, and PEPFAR has certainly been a big help. But ask an American — or a Western European — if they've ever heard of the program, and they're almost certain to draw a blank. That's partly because the United States has done very little to publicize the success of PEPFAR, and partly because the Bush presidency was overshadowed by much more high-profile aspects of his foreign policy (such as the invasion of Iraq).
Indeed, Bush still enjoys high popularity ratings in Africa, where he's widely regarded as one of the continent's great benefactors. (Meanwhile, the Obama administration's proposed PEPFAR cuts have triggered protests around Africa — even in Kenya, where the president's family ties have ensured him plenty of favorable coverage.)







Why cutting PEPFAR is bad policy

By Chris Collins, amfAR,The Foundation for AIDS Research - 03/13/12 10:55 AM ET
Last week a new analysis of adult mortality rates in African countries was released. The study authors found that between 2004 and 2008, in those nations where the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was most active, the odds of death were about 20 percent lower than in other countries in the region. It was one more piece in the growing collection of evidence that PEPFAR has been a tremendously successful program, advancing U.S. humanitarian and diplomatic priorities and saving millions of lives. 
That is why the proposal in President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget to cut bi-lateral HIV programming through PEPFAR by nearly $550 million, or 11 percent, has stunned so many on Capitol Hill and in the global health community. Here are six reasons why this proposal should be rejected by Congress:

1. It undermines the goal of an “AIDS-free generation.” Last December, President Obama pledged that we can “end this pandemic,” echoing Secretary of State Clinton’s earlier statement that achieving an “AIDS-free generation” is a policy priority for the U.S. But the budget request isn’t consistent with this stated ambition. Though the White House insists the U.S. can still achieve the AIDS treatment and other targets set by the president last year, it is inevitable that PEPFAR program managers, faced with seriously diminished resources and ambitious targets in a few areas, will slash services for which there are no specific goals. That might include, for example, the PEPFAR program providing food and education to millions of children orphaned by AIDS.

2. It proposes worse than a zero sum game for global health. The president’s budget wisely calls for a needed increase for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, but seeks to reduce funding for PEPFAR by $200 million more than the amount added to the Global Fund. PEPFAR and the Global Fund are increasingly synergistic and depend on each other for success in many countries. A reduction of the magnitude proposed for PEPFAR endangers bothprograms.
4. It is bad fiscal policy. Global health represents one quarter of one percent of the federal budget, so even a major reduction in this area won’t solve the debt crisis. PEPFAR is increasingly efficient, with per-person treatment costs plummeting since the program’s inception. And stepping back from our commitment to an AIDS-free generation means the crushing burden of the pandemic in terms of lives and productivity lost, as well as major health care costs, will continue to weigh us down for decades to come.

5. It is bad politics. In a time of partisan strife, PEPFAR is one of the few programs with sustained 
bipartisan support. First proposed by President George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR has consistently been praised by Republican and Democratic leaders. The most recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll on global health spending found that in 2010, in the middle of a bad recession, 65 percent of Americans said U.S. spending on global health was “too little” or “about right.”

6. It is bad diplomacy. PEPFAR has boosted support for the U.S. overseas, winning praise from political leaders and demonstrating America’s commitment to advancing the wellbeing of people around the world. The program is emblematic of the “smart power” approach advocated by Secretary of State Clinton. As she testified before a Senate committee last month, PEPFAR “buys us so much good will . . . if you go to sub-Saharan Africa, it’s one of the reasons why people have a positive view of the United States.”

The U.S. faces tough fiscal choices in the years ahead, but slashing PEPFAR when America is on the verge of leading the world toward the beginning of the end of the AIDS epidemic doesn’t make sense. By funding the program at least at its current level, Congress can advance U.S. humanitarian and diplomatic interests, and change the course of the epidemic.  

Collins is the vice president and director of public policy for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research.