Barbara Lee Calls for Focus on African Americans at XVI International AIDS Conference
(Toronto, Canada) – U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) faulted the Bush administration’s failure to address the toll that AIDS is taking on African Americans in the U.S. and called for increased funding for prevention and treatment at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto this weekend.
“AIDS is devastating the African American community and the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have just turned their backs,” said Lee, who serves as the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Global AIDS Taskforce. “We need a real commitment to increasing funding for the Minority AIDS Initiative, and we have to begin to address the economic and social issues that contribute the prevalence of AIDS in our community.”
Lee pointed to her home district in Alameda County, California as an example of both the scale of the problem and the potential for innovative solutions.
“In my district in Alameda County over 6,600 cases of AIDS have been diagnosed since 1980, nearly 4,000 people have died and well over 40 percent of those people are African Americans,” said Lee. “In 1998 we were the first to declare a State of Emergency as it relates to HIV/AIDS in the African American community, which allowed us to tap into additional funding to combat the disease. It also inspired the creation of a community wide taskforce that included local AIDS service organizations, elected officials, and the county health department to ensure that there was a focused response to this epidemic that targeted the African American community.”
Lee has led a number of legislative initiatives to address issues related to African Americans and AIDS. In 2005, the House of Representatives passed her resolution supporting the goals of National Black AIDS Awareness Day. She has introduced legislation aimed at ensuring continuing care and treatment for Gulf Coast residents living with HIV/AIDS who were displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and later this year she will introduce legislation to allow the distribution of condoms in federal prisons and to develop a strategy to reduce HIV and other STIs in prisons.
Lee has also introduced legislation (H.R. 2553, the REAL Act) to end abstinence-only sex education in the United States and replace it with medically accurate, comprehensive sex education.
Lee has led Congressional efforts to shape global AIDS policy to address the fact that the global AIDS pandemic disproportionately affects people of African descent. As the lead author of the Global AIDS and Tuberculosis Relief Act of 2000 and the principal co-author of legislation establishing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s accomplishments in promoting effective, bipartisan measures to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and bring treatment to the infected have earned her international recognition as a leader in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
She is the only member of the United States Congress to participate in every International AIDS Conference since 2000.
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