Recognizing World Aids Day

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today is World AIDS Day, a time for us to reflect on one of the worst plagues the world has experienced. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the first appearance of the disease in the United States.

For three decades this preventable disease has devastated families and communities around the world. It has killed over 25 million people. But there has been a strong global response from the research community, governments, health workers, and patient advocates to fight this disease and save lives. This battle has yielded notable victories, and I am proud of the leadership the United States has demonstrated in the fight against AIDS.

The number of newly infected people in the world is steadily declining. Successful antiretroviral treatments have saved 2.5 million lives in developing countries. Advancements have been made in HIV testing and prevention, and biomedical innovations have created powerful drugs that can transform AIDS from a death sentence into a more manageable chronic disease. Most recently, promising tests in gene therapies and vaccines are giving researchers renewed hope for a way to prevent the spread of HIV. Some scientists are becoming optimistic about the possibility of a cure.

Despite this considerable progress, however, an estimated 34 million people in the world are still suffering from AIDS--5 million more than in 2002. Only about half of them have access to ongoing medical treatment that is essential to making HIV/AIDS a manageable disease.

Today President Obama announced two new initiatives that will enable us to build on our successful efforts to combat HIV/AIDS here in America. First, the United States will commit $15 million to the Ryan White program, which supports HIV clinics around the country. In addition, we will commit $35 million to State AIDS drug assistance programs.

I commend the President and his administration on these critical new commitments. They represent the next step in America's first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which the President introduced in 2010. They remind us that AIDS doesn't just affect people in developing countries--1.2 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, and over 600,000 people here have died from this deadly virus.

Thirty years into this epidemic, the burden of the disease in America continues to be disproportionately borne by gay and bisexual men and people of color. While African Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for almost half of all people living with HIV and half of new infections each year.

In the State of Illinois, over 37,000 people have HIV or AIDS. Eighty-three percent of those people make their homes in Chicago. All of these lives depend upon continued Federal commitment to investment in research and treatments.

There is hope. Organizations such as AIDS Foundation Chicago--the umbrella group for HIV/AIDS groups working in Chicago--are dedicated to eliminating the disease in the United States. The ONE Campaign is a grassroots organization that works closely with African leaders and activists to stop the spread of preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS. These two groups are examples of the many groups of people of conscience who are working to make HIV/AIDS history. The promising new biomedical research in gene therapies and vaccines gives me hope that we can someday eliminate AIDS and in the meantime improve the lives of those who are affected by it both here and abroad. But these important programs depend upon the Federal Government's will and ability to fund them. Unfortunately, these programs are at risk.

The U.N. recently released a progress report on the global response to AIDS. It said:

Financial pressures on both domestic and foreign assistance budgets are threatening the impressive progress to date. Recent data indicating that HIV funding is declining is a deeply troubling trend that must be reversed for the international community to meet its commitments on HIV.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria--the international financing institution that invests the world's money into fighting these deadly diseases--has recently announced that the decline in funds is putting the fund in a tough spot. It can't award any new grants until 2014.

As Congress debates the deficit, we should remember that the fight against AIDS has always been a bipartisan effort. It was under the administration of President George W. Bush that PEPFAR--now the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde U.S. Global Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act--was created. PEPFAR and other notable programs continue to be strengthened under the Obama administration. Today our President reminded us of this historical bipartisan support. He said:

At a time when so much in Washington divides us, the fight against this disease has united us across parties and across presidents. And it shows that we can do big things when Republicans and Democrats put their common humanity before politics.

We need to cut the deficit, but let's be smart about it. The fact is that every dollar we cut from HIV/AIDS research and treatment this year means additional funding will be required the next year and the next. But this is not just about saving taxpayer dollars, as important as that is. Most of all, this is about saving lives. Every dollar not funded this year will exact a horrible toll. Men, women, and children will die who otherwise could have been saved. People who would have lived longer, healthier lives will have to rely on overly burdened programs such as Medicare and Medicaid just to survive. We must not allow that to happen.

Several years ago, I visited a program in Uganda for women who were dying of AIDS. We sat on the porch, and the women showed me scrapbooks they were making. They were gathering together photos, notes, and other bits of memorabilia about their lives so that their children would have some way to remember them after they died. Their children, playing in the yard, had already lost one parent and were now about to be orphaned. As I sat with those mothers, all of Uganda began to feel like a terminal ward of a hospital--an entire nation waiting to die. That is not true anymore. Today, because of discoveries by scientists and the determination of people of conscience, there is hope in Uganda and other desperately poor nations that have been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

There is also hope here at home. The United States continues to demonstrate its leadership in eliminating HIV/AIDS, but we cannot allow our efforts to fail for lack of funding and support. The elimination of HIV/AIDS is one of our most important commitments to the people of this country and the world, and we ought to keep that promise.

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