AIDS in Africa: The Question of Money
Written by Leon Spencer
Executive Director, Washington Office on Africa
Money isn’t everything. We’ve heard this expression, in one context or another, all of our lives. And it’s true. Our very theology of stewardship emphasizes the mission of the church at least as much as the financial resources required.
Moreover, the church, at our better moments, has been resistant to the economic quantification of life, and its corollary, that sufficient money will resolve whatever challenges we face. And when we turn to the AIDS crisis in Africa, we can affirm that care for AIDS orphans within families rather than in institutions, personal decisions to avoid risky sexual behavior, and messages – especially from within the churches – to counter the tendency to stigmatize people living with AIDS, all are steps that transcend the question of money.
And yet, of course, money matters. It makes it possible to educate, to prevent, to treat. In our first newsletter, on initiatives before Congress, we talked a bit about appropriations, looking at the details of Congressional and administration goals. This issue of the newsletter will let that analysis stand. Here we seek to reflect more deeply about the U.S. commitment to development assistance, particularly as it applies to AIDS in Africa, and to what this commitment – or lack of commitment – says about U.S. and our place in the world.
The magnitude of the HIV/AIDS crisis requires a greater U.S. commitment
The week before Thanksgiving nearly 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate wrote to President Bush, urging that the U.S. provide one billion dollars in emergency funding to combat global AIDS. Generally accepted figures of the money needed to confront AIDS globally are $7-10 billion per year. With the appropriations bills working their way through Congress, the U.S. will likely make $250 to $300 million available for the new Global AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Fund in 2002. From all donor nations, the figure only reaches $1.5 billion.
Seeking to make vivid the magnitude of the AIDS crisis – 35 million people are now infected, and 22 million have died – Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont speculated:
"Suppose we woke up tomorrow morning and learned that every single man, woman, and child, every single person, in Miami, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Washington, DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, Detroit, and Dallas, combined, were infected with a virus. for which there was no cure. Don’t you think that we would respond as rapidly and with the kind of finances as we did after September 11th?"
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