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For Immediate Release

RECAP: AIDS Town Meeting Held at UCLA

Cambridge, Mass - 10/23/2008

(Los Angeles) Earlier this year, the US approved $48 billion for global AIDS. A few weeks later, the Centers for Disease Control revealed that HIV is spreading in the United States far faster than was previously thought.


Speakers included US Representative Howard Berman (D-CA); Craig Thompson, the Executive Director of AIDS Project Los Angeles; and the Honorable Dr. Elioda Tumwesigye, a Ugandan medical doctor, Parliamentarian, and outspoken AIDS advocate who is accompanying PHR on a barnstorming tour of California.

Rep. Berman was in Africa this summer to observe how PEPFAR is being implemented on the ground. He described the successes of the reauthorized bill, which triples the allocation for the U.S. response to HIV, TB and malaria, and expands its reach beyond initial 15 focus countries. "Now, we need to integrate HIV into broader health concerns such as food security, nutrition and vaccine research," Rep. Berman said, adding: "We also have a lot of work to do to protect women and girls."

Gail Wyatt, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and an associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, noted that methods to address AIDS in the U.S., which were largely developed toward the beginning of the epidemic, have been geared primarily toward white gay males. Still needed are policies and programs geared toward other ethnic and cultural groups that are otherwise not being reached. "That's the challenge we have in America," she said. "For a developed country we are behind the ball, and the ball is still rolling."

Said Dr. Tumwesigye, "There are 2.1 million people dying of AIDS every year. If instead of AIDS those people were on planes that were falling from the sky, it would be more than 5,000 planes. The UN Security Council would call an emergency meeting. The world would stop—and everyone would try to solve this problem. Instead, it's business as usual."

The meeting was unusual because it addressed both global AIDS and the US epidemic at the same time. PHR's CEO Frank Donague commented, "People deserve the right to health whether they live in Soweto or South L.A. The US must live up to its commitment to fight AIDS worldwide; we must fully fund the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. But we also need a national AIDS strategy to address the epidemic raging right here in our backyard."



If fully funded, PEPFAR 2 also promises to prevent 12 million HIV infections and treat three million people over five years. The reauthorized program made several key changes from PEPFAR 1, including a focus on women and AIDS—though much more must be done to protect the human rights of women.






PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: To follow PHR's trip, visit PHRinCalifornia.Org

For 20 years, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), based in Boston, MA, has advanced health and dignity by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.








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