An excerpt from my piece in the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services This editorial is based on a short trip I took to South Africa earlier this year. April 2009 In 2006, then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michele traveled to Kenya, Obama’s father’s homeland where many of the senator’s extended family still […]
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UNAIDS got into the fray. Let me say that I normally like this pope. At least as much as a non-RC can. But what he said in a one-off comment is more than “irresponsible”, as some have called it. It is a lie and will lead to unneeded deaths among those Benedict says need the […]
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Well, this will just cause all sorts of problems. And before anyone lectures me about the morality of drug legalization or illegalization, what I care most about is keeping people from getting HIV. “Harm reduction” (which includes things like needle exchange) is the best we’ve got right now. If we can figure out a better […]
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The pending Wall Street bailout reminds us that the buoyant global economy of recent years created permissive conditions for international altruism on global health and development. With America’s economy staggering, the effects are being felt further afield among other major industrialized economies, the UK included. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has for more than a […]
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As the global AIDS community prepares for the conference beginning Sunday in Mexico City, President Bush is signing the reauthorization bill for PEPFAR today. It has been named after Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde, Democratic and Republican members of Congress who passed away within the past year. When Elizabeth Dole attempted to name the bill […]
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The Senate voted 65-3 on a cloture motion on PEPFAR reauthorization last Friday. Here’s a story in today’s Times about PEPFAR reauthorization. More details on Kaiser. Looks like Sen. Jim Demint made an ass of himself before his colleagues on Friday when he insisted on a Friday evening procedural vote on cloture and then didn’t […]
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In advance of the Hokkaido G8 summit in July, Japan just announced last week a new contribution to the Global Fund of $560mn, spread out over an unspecified period of years. This is the second reasonably large pledged contribution from Japan since then Prime Minister Koizumi pledged $500mn back in 2005. Here is summary from […]
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Just when it looked like PEPFAR would be reauthorized and that Congress would appropriate even more money than the president asked for, seven Senators, led by Tom Coburn of Oklahoma (along with Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, David Vitter, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr), have placed a hold on the bill, dramatically reducing the chances […]
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Mead Over of the Center of Global Development has a new paper, identifying a problem I wrote about before (see here). Unless the U.S. government gets a handle on AIDS prevention, the extension of ARV therapy will consume a larger and larger share of U.S. foreign assistance. In effect, we have created an external entitlement […]
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Over at the CSIS Africa Policy Forum, I have a new op-ed on male circumcision and HIV prevention. Here are some excerpts: In the past few years, clinical trials in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa confirmed that male circumcision (MC) reduces the risk of transmission of HIV infection by approximately 60%. In its Fourth Annual […]
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