Luke Messac | One step toward an AIDS-free generation

One year after I joined in protesting President Barack Obama’s administration, the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton give me great hope. On Tuesday, Clinton delivered a highly anticipated speech on the United States response to the global AIDS pandemic at the National Institutes of Health. To an audience of pioneering researchers and other global health pioneers, she announced, “Creating an AIDS-free generation has never been a policy priority of the United States government — until today.”

Today, the big question remains: Will Obama match bold words with real action on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day?

I never thought I would protest the president I had toiled to see elected. After graduating from college in 2008, I worked as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Oregon, Georgia and Ohio. After election day, confident that our president-elect would keep his promises, I left for Rwanda to live and work in a rural hospital. Yet, in the fall of 2010, during my first semester of medical school at Penn, I joined a group of students protesting Obama at a midterm campaign rally in Germantown, Pa. In the weeks that followed, other college students and activists pulled off even larger demonstrations at presidential rallies in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

Our goal was to hold the president to his word. During the 2008 campaign, then-Sen. Obama had pledged to increase federal spending against the global AIDS pandemic by $1 billion during each year of his presidency. Yet, in 2009 and 2010, the president’s budget requests for AIDS prevention and treatment efforts fell far short of this mark.

As a result, the rapid scale-up in antiretroviral treatment access that began during the Bush administration slowed considerably, and the first years of the Obama administration saw drug shortages and waiting lists in hard-hit countries. Though global health funding accounted for far less than 1 percent of federal spending, the Obama administration indicated through its actions that solemn promises to the destitute sick were moot in the wake of the financial crisis. Forced to choose between quietly accepting a broken pledge by the president I admired and standing up for patients dying from preventable and treatable diseases like AIDS, I joined the protests.

Until Tuesday, my fellow demonstrators and I were not sure whether Obama would ever honor his campaign promise. But Clinton’s speech was truly inspired. She outlined the administration’s goals: ending mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus, expanding the reach of proven prevention methods such as voluntary medical male circumcision and ensuring access to treatment to halt progression to AIDS and lower the risk of transmission. “HIV may be with us well into the future,” she admitted. “But the disease that it causes need not be.”

We already know that an AIDS-free generation is possible. Between 2001 and 2009, as global financial resources to fight the pandemic increased and the cost of drugs fell, the rate of new infections and HIV-related mortality began to decline. Last spring, a multi-country randomized-controlled trial found that treatment of HIV-positive individuals reduced the risk of transmitting the virus to HIV-negative partners by 96 percent. Anthony Fauci, a legendary immunologist and presidential adviser on infectious diseases, explained that these results marked a tipping point. At long last, the scientific evidence showed a way “to begin to control and ultimately end the AIDS pandemic.”

If backed by sufficient resources, Clinton’s bold announcement marks the beginning of the end of one of history’s greatest scourges. Yet, it remains to be seen whether these words will be matched by action. On World AIDS Day, Obama can demonstrate his commitment to the goal of an AIDS-free generation by announcing that the United States will double the pace of treatment scale-up in the programs it supports around the globe, reaching 6 million people by 2013. At the same time, Obama should ask other world leaders to join the U.S. in ending AIDS by announcing their own bold targets. Finally, Obama must defend domestic and international AIDS programs from shortsighted congressional cuts. Slashing spending on AIDS programs will not help balance the budget, but it will cost millions of lives.

Obama knows that an AIDS-free generation is within reach. His actions will help decide whether that treasured title will be our children’s inheritance.

Luke Messac is a School of Medicine student and Ph.D. candidate. His email address is lmessac@mail.med.upenn.edu.

SEE ALSO

2006: On World AIDS Day, a cry for better funding

2010: No major campus events organized for World AIDS day

2010: Editorial | Don’t stay silent

2010: Grassroots AIDS activism at Penn

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.