Guest Opinion

January 16, 2003

Where’s Nancy Pelosi on Global AIDS?

This past summer, about a million people died of AIDS while Congress debated how much money to give the United Nations Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria, an international fund that was the best hope for saving their lives.

While estimates of the U.S. fair share begin at least $2 billion, the US has given only $200 million per year, one-tenth that amount. Two hundred million dollars is just one-fifth of San Francisco’s health budget for 700,000 people. The Global Fund, meanwhile, is meant to care for 42 million people with AIDS, and millions more with other diseases.

In August, President Bush blocked attempts to increase the US contribution. At this writing, the Global Fund is broke. Mirroring the early days of the epidemic when Ronald Reagan turned away as thousands of us died, our government seems poised to repeat this tragedy, this time on the global stage.

Back then, gutsy and relentless members of Congress, including Democrats Henry Waxman, Ted Weiss, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi, hammered home the message that people with AIDS here needed help, challenging the President and US health bureaucrats. They pushed for more money than the White House was initially willing to give through legislation, public hearings, reports, and press conferences. Their work culminated in the Ryan White Care Act of 1990, which continues to save lives in this country today.

These Democrats were out in front then, leading nationally. Far fewer are leading now when it comes to the global AIDS disaster. And sadly, Congresswoman Pelosi, now the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, has been less forceful in addressing global AIDS than she was for domestic AIDS issues.

Yes, she has signed on to letters, bills, legislative amendments to support global AIDS, and she has supported limited AIDS funding through the U.S. Agency for International Development (the group that famously opposed antiviral AIDS treatment by claiming that Africans can’t tell time).

But we need more from Nancy Pelosi than that. We need to see a clear and visionary plan from her office for fighting the global AIDS epidemic.

In the next two weeks, George Bush is deliberating about the size of his next contribution to the Global Fund. Now is the time for Congresswoman Pelosi to publicly advocate for money for the Global Fund. And in the new legislative session, we call on her to introduce a bill that would provide $3 billion dollars to the Global Fund—especially money for HIV treatment.

Finally, we need her to campaign for this funding relentlessly and to make it a cornerstone of her new public role. We know she can do this; she’s done it before.

The Clinton administration, in its final months, recognized the global AIDS epidemic as a threat to national security. Even with a downsized economy and greater demands on national spending, this is more true now, not less. Americans support more funding for foreign aid, especially if it will help build national security. But less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid, and we are dead last among donor nations in our contributions as a percentage of gross national product.

If Americans are concerned about terrorism in Yemen and Somalia, what will happen when AIDS destabilizes most of Africa?

These are the dark days of the global AIDS epidemic Ninety-five percent of people who need treatment are dying without it. Desperately needed prevention and vaccine programs go unfunded. By the time you read this, another million men, women and children will have died since this summer. Twenty million people have died so far.

If Bono, the lead singer of an Irish rock band, can crisscross the country to push for global AIDS funding, the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives can point the way as well. If Senator Bill Frist, a Republican, can lead the charge (until he caved into White House pressure earlier this year), Pelosi can surely step up. If even a remorseful Jesse Helms campaigned for global AIDS money, Pelosi can surely lead. Nancy Pelosi must distinguish her party by articulating its most fundamental values. She must stand up against global AIDS.

Days ago, I attended an AIDS memorial service for David Fox, who was a San Francisco AIDS activist for twenty years. It was heartening to have Nancy Pelosi there, with 600 of us, to remember David’s life and contributions in the fight against AIDS. Now we need her to stand with us again, to lead us in fact. In describing David’s life, one speaker recalled Dr. Martin Luther King’s words that the ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy. Now is that time for Nancy Pelosi.

----By Michael Lauro, founding member of the AIDS Policy Project and of Survive AIDS (formerly ACT UP Golden Gate).