Barbara Lee Attends White House World AIDS Day Event
Applauds Obama Administrations Plan for Global, National AIDS Strategy
Washington, DC – Today, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) attended the White House World AIDS Day event where the administration discussed its new Global and National AIDS strategies. Additionally, it was announced that with President Barack Obama’s recent decision to formally repeal the United States travel and immigration restrictions on people living with HIV, Washington D.C. would be the host nation for the International AIDS Society's (IAS) XXIX International AIDS Conference in 2012. Congresswoman Lee was instrumental in the lifting of the travel ban and has been working with IAS to bring the International AIDS Conference back to the United States. She released this statement:
“The decision of the IAS to host their 2012 International AIDS Conference in the United States gives us an extraordinary opportunity to highlight our commitment to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to help contextualize the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic on a global stage.
“The announcement of the Administration's new global AIDS strategy is also important to guiding the implementation of our global programs over the next five years. If we are truly going to get a handle on this pandemic, our new global strategy must also focus on addressing the needs of vulnerable communities - particularly men who have sex with men, sex workers and intravenous drug users. I plan to continue to work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure that we provide the necessary resources to carry out this strategy by meeting our commitment in the PEPFAR reauthorization last year to provide a minimum of $48 billion to combat HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
"At home we must build on the recent reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act by passing real health care reform and expanding support for our prevention, care, and treatment programs - most immediately by increasing funding for the Minority AIDS Initiative. I will continue to work to ensure that our National AIDS Strategy provides clear and ambitious targets to reduce HIV infection rates, increase access to testing, care, and treatment, and address the spread of this disease among the communities who have been most impacted.
“As we commemorate World AIDS Day tomorrow let us all recommit ourselves to stamping out HIV/AIDS from the face of the earth.”
Congresswoman Lee has been a leader in the fight against the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. She co-authored legislation signed into law creating the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in 2000, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, and the PEPFAR Reauthorization Act in 2008. She authored original legislation to remove the travel and immigration ban in 2007 and played a key role in repealing the statutory ban as part of the PEPFAR Reauthorization in 2008.
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