View photos and video shortly after the Philly action is done at www.healthgap.org/mdg

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | 09/20/10

Press Contacts: Max Ray – 215-908-8939

Duane Kaufman - 484-469-1062

AIDS ACTIVIST PROTEST OBAMA FUNDRAISER, DEMANDING AN END TO WAITING LISTS FOR AIDS TREATMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD

Philadelphia – AIDS activists lined the street around the Convention Center, just outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center where President Obama attended a fundraiser for Representative Joe Sestak. The activists stretched out in a long line, to show the reality facing 138 people on wait lists for housing in Philadelphia, 3,214 people on wait lists for medicine across the US, and 70% of people worldwide who need AIDS medicine but don’t have access.

The demonstrators included Philadelphians who are currently on the waiting list for AIDS housing in Philadelphia, and people living with HIV from New Jersey, a state that recently dropped 1000 people from its AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP). The Americans on wait lists expressed empathy with people on wait lists around the world. Many people were tested for HIV in programs funded by the US government and promised life-saving medicine when they got sick. Those same people are now being told there is no medicine available, or that they will have to travel huge distances to access it.

ACT UP member Cliff Williams told stories he’d heard of people in Africa trying to share their medicine to help sick children, parents, and spouses. He also told about people living with HIV who sent their medicine to Africa to try to help. “We want to help, we want to solve the problem. But the only way to end AIDS is to provide the funding we were promised. President Obama could be the president who ends AIDS, and all it would take is one tenth of one percent of what he spent to bail out the banks.”

In 2000 the US pledged to help the world meet its Millennium Development Goals, which included a pledge to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV by 2015. As a candidate, President Obama pledged achieve universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010, and increase funding for global AIDS to $50 bllion over five years. The reality is that in 2010, clinics in Africa are running out of money to add new people to treatment, and the United States has over 3000 citizens on wait lists for the ADAP. President Obama’s two budgets included only minor increases in funding that do not even keep pace with inflation.

According to Williams, the wait lists for housing in Philadelphia, for ADAP across the United States, and for medicine in Uganda are all connected. “If they get away with [letting people die for lack of funding] over there, they’ll get away with it here.”

“As a person with AIDS, I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said ACT UP member Duane Kaufman. “If activists hadn’t fought so we could have medicine, I wouldn’t be alive today. And if I didn’t have housing, I wouldn’t be able to take my medicine every day. I’m afraid of losing my housing and losing access to medicine if politicians don’t keep their promises.”

“AIDS treatment has been proven to reduce HIV infections by 92%. While President Obama and Democrats in Congress keep spending on war and bailouts, millions worldwide are becoming infected with HIV who have no chance of accessing life-saving medication, if the current trend of flat-lining funding continues”, said Kaytee Riek of Health GAP, a global AIDS activist group.

This demonstration is happening on the same day as a protest at the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in NYC, and is part of a week of action called for by AIDS activists from South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign.

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