Bush Administration Should Follow Through on Global AIDS Initiative Promises, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial States

Western nations should be "ashamed" of themselves as they "squabble over intellectual property rights, abortion and the speed with which African nations can absorb and deliver needed medical assistance," because the "window for stopping AIDS' inexorable spread is closing -- indeed, may already have closed," a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial says. Although Western nations "continue to dither, as if political boundaries offer protection" against HIV, the AIDS epidemic is "our problem" -- not Africa's or Asia's -- "as long as we travel and trade around the globe," according to the editorial. Although the Bush administration has pledged $15 billion over five years through the global AIDS initiative, the administration "has been quick to withdraw funding for some organizations providing health care to poor women and children in Africa and Asia" and has "made a conscious decision to exclude" from receiving funding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in favor of a "unilateralist approach that will waste time, money and lives," the editorial says. Noting that President Bush in his State of the Union address in January said that the United States has a "moral obligation" to fight AIDS, the Post-Dispatch concludes that "it will take actions -- not words -- for [Bush] to claim the moral high ground" in the fight against AIDS (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/28).