| The US Global AIDS Plan |
Health GAP needs your help to fight to expand access to AIDS treatment in 2012.
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December 1st, 2011
Do you find this year a confusing mess of optimism and impending doom? What is anyone supposed to make of the contradictions between the new science that has shown that the end of AIDS is imminently within our grasp and the dishonest withdrawal of pledged funding by donors all over the world?
We are confronting policy makers all over the world with these game-changing facts: science has proven conclusively that AIDS drugs, by suppressing viral load, effectively halt new infections between sexually active serodiscordant couples. In other words, if governments can be made to deliver on their commitments to get ARVs to everyone in need under updated guidelines, virtually all new infections due to sexual transmission will end.
We are finally in a place where the end of the AIDS pandemic is in sight – and credit is due to you. It was your contributions of time and money that led to the historic new global commitment by all UN Member States to extend AIDS treatment to at least 15 million people by 2015. It is because of your support and your advocacy that now, for the first time, official U.S. policy is to create “an AIDS-free generation”. This announcement by Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton last month was the outcome of a long, multi-country campaign led by Health GAP simultaneously to leverage more from the White House and developing countries. Clinton’s speech was a milestone victory for Health GAP and an enormous leap forward in our fight to ensure that every person living with HIV has access to lifesaving medications.
We are winning, but we have much more to do. At the same time that the most compelling science demonstrates that ending AIDS is within our grasp, donor countries around the world have withdrawn or cut their support for global AIDS—the U.S. being the largest among them.
We are preparing for a powerful, truly international mobilization during the International AIDS Conference on July 24, 2012 in Washington, D.C. The global AIDS movement needs to turn out tens of thousands of people in order to have a strong impact on world leaders With your support, we can win new commitments that put us on a trajectory to end AIDS by funding this year’s bold commitment to place 15 million people on treatment by 2015.
These next few months are crucial for our activism. This has been our most difficult year when it comes to Health GAP’s financial outlook. Now, when we can finally see the end of the pandemic, the economy has caused foundations to scale back their support of Health GAP’s gutsy movement-building AIDS advocacy that links grassroots voices of people with HIV from around the U.S. and from the other front line countries where we work. We need you, now more than ever, to support us and to support us in the biggest way you can.
In order to bring about an end to AIDS, this year Health GAP has:
- Organized more than six new AIDS activist chapters in key Congressional districts around the country.
- Supported and catalyzed the growth of the Student Global AIDS Campaign— now going strong with over 25 chapters on high school and college campuses across the country
- Mobilized AIDS activists in Kenya to demand and win a landmark new national target of one million Kenyans on ART by 2015 along with an 18% increase in the domestic health budget to help fight AIDS and to hire more than 6000 new nurses across Kenya.
- Won five new syringe exchange programs in Kenya—the first ever, and much needed to turn back a leading cause of new infections on the East African coast.
- Helped build a coalition of AIDS and women’s rights activists in Uganda fighting a landmark constitutional court case suing the government for not providing essential maternal health care and treatment for HIV positive pregnant women.
- Mobilized grassroots Ugandan activists to directly intervene and get heard by candidates in national elections in that country-more to come in Kenya in 2012.
- Created and mobilized for 22 direct actions (nearly two per month) in over ten cities.
- Trained over 600 grassroots AIDS activists in leadership and advocacy skills.
- Generated over 45 media articles highlighting barriers to HIV treatment access
- Published over 50 policy alerts and policy papers informing grassroots AIDS activists and decision makers alike about how trade policies harm people with HIV, the potential benefits of a financial transaction tax, and the need for continued funding to fight global AIDS.
- Provided technical assistance to dozens of indigenous activist and community organizations in African countries facing the highest burdens of untreated HIV—including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia--to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding global programs like PEPFAR and the Global Fund
Health GAP does all this work, spanning four continents, on a shoestring budget, with virtually no administrative overhead. Health GAP’s tiny but talented staff all perform multiple duties, serving as experienced organizers, advocates, technical editors, researchers, media liaisons, civil disobedience participants, coordinators and coalition builders—and as fundraisers.
Please help us finally draw the AIDS epidemic to an end by making the largest donation to Health GAP that you ever have, right now. If you have never donated before, please make this year your first year to support our lifesaving work.
We are so grateful for your support. Thank you.
Click here to donate to Health GAP and support our work.
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