Obama Changes USA HIV Policy
posted: 29/01/2009
President Obama signalled an end to globally criticised aspects of Bush era HIV policy.
On Friday the president issued an executive order repealing Bush's "Mexico City" Policy. This banned U.S.A. funding for international health groups that use their own funds to perform abortions, lobby their governments in favour of abortion rights or provide counseling about terminating pregnancies.
Obama said that he would now work with Congress to restore funding to the United Nations Population Fund to prevent HIV/AIDS, reduce poverty, and improve health care access for women and children in 154 countries.
Obama's decision was praised by women's health advocates, family planning groups and others for allowing USAID to fund programmes that offer HIV prevention and care, birth control and medical services.
End to Bush funding cuts for HIV support
Critics of Bush’s "Mexico City" policy say it meant large cuts worldwide for organisations that provide family planning services and basic health care. For example in Ethiopia and Lesotho, some non-governmental organisations are not able to offer comprehensive and integrated health services to people living with HIV.
Shalini Nataraj of the Global Fund for Women writes of one operation in Ghana that lost funding because it refused to adhere to the "Mexico City" Policy, resulting in an estimated 600,000 people losing access to HIV/AIDS prevention education, counseling and family planning services.
We will need to wait to hear about Obama's plans with Congress to restore funding for these important aspects of international HIV work.
Women harmed by ban on sex workers support
The effects of the policy have been "compounded" by a requirement in Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that organisations receiving funding must oppose commercial sex work, Nataraj writes, adding that the "reasoning behind this pledge is that by denying services or outreach to those who work as commercial sex workers, such [sex] work will be abolished and HIV will be reduced."
She writes that the "reality is otherwise, because women enter sex work for a variety of deeply entrenched socio-cultural and economic reasons that must be addressed before [commercial sex work] can be reduced. This means that organisations that work with sex workers are threatened with a loss of funding for serving those most in need of information and protection from HIV".
Bush's U.S. Global AIDS Co-ordinator sacked
In another signal of change in USA international HIV policy, the Obama government has sacked Mark Dybul, U.S. Global AIDS Co-ordinator and administrator of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. An e-mail sent on Thursday to U.S. foreign aid officials said that Dybul is "no longer serving" as PEPFAR administrator and that the Office of the Global AIDS Co-ordinator "will continue to function under the leadership of career staff until a successor is confirmed." Dybul ran PEPFAR since 2006 and Congress extended his job for 5 more years just last summer.
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