The Obama Administration has released its global AIDS plans and many are unhappy and left wanting more.  Obama’s plan calls for putting less people on antiretroviral drugs and instead focus more on prevention and other communicable diseases that cost less to fight.

According to the New York Times, AIDS activists are frustrated and some are going so far as to say that they actually miss President Bush, since he did more for the cause.  They are placing blame squarely on the shoulders of a doctor and budget advisor who also happens to be the brother of Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

“I’m holding my nose as I say this, but I miss George W. Bush,” said Gregg Gonsalves a long-time AIDS campaigner. “On AIDS, he really stepped up. He did a tremendous thing. Now, to have this happen under Obama is really depressing.”

PEPFAR recently released its “Five Year Strategy,” which has a new goal of having four million people on antiretroviral drugs by 2014.  That would be a net loss of about 180,000 people per year.  It has put 2.4 million people on the drugs since 2004 — about 500,000 per year — but is only adding 1.6 million people over the next five years, which equals out to 320,000 people per year.

The administration hopes to save more lives with the money it has to spend by buying things like water filters, oral rehydration packets and generic antibiotics.  Putting a single person on antiretroviral drugs costs anywhere from $35 to $2,000 per year.

Continue reading article at the New York Times

Tags: AIDS, Health Care, HIV, Obama Administration