Obama Administration Accomplishments List
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- What does it mean?
Building on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA), created by the Clinton Administration (ref), and the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan), created by the George W. Bush Administration, which allocated $15 billion to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic (ref), the National HIV/AIDS Strategy created the "nation's first-ever comprehensive coordinated HIV/AIDS roadmap with clear and measurable targets to be achieved by 2015" (ref).
The 3 goals of this plan are to:- Reduce new HIV infections
- Increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV
- Reduce HIV-related health disparities (ref)
President Obama's drug policy also demonstrates his awareness of the intricacies involved in comprehensively battling the spread of HIV. Previously, needle-exchange programs, designed to reduce the spread of HIV, were banned from receiving federal money; President Obama signed a measure lifting that ban (ref).
One aspect of the strategy I specifically want to point out, because it often is overlooked, is the memorandum to address "employment-related discrimination against people living with HIV" (ref).
- Why does it matter?
In the United States alone, about a million people are living with AIDS, and an estimated 33 million globally are living with HIV/AIDS (ref). Thanks to medical research and outreach, since the AIDS was diagnosed as an official epidemic in the 1980's (ref), with proper treatment and care, life expectancy has significantly increased, sometimes upwards of 35 years after contraction of the virus (ref). Yet, we still have no cure, and the anathema continues to spread among people of the United States and the world.
Too often, the roots of a problem are ignored, and people suffering from AIDS have been (and sadly, still are) treated as though they deserve the illness as punishment (ref1), (ref2), (ref3). Even if HIV were contracted only through drug use (which it is not), refusing addicts clean needles in hopes that the possibility of contracting HIV would prevent drug abuse is the modern equivalent chopping off hands to deter thieves. Drug withdrawal feels to those under its control as powerful as starving to death -- if you felt like you were dying, wouldn't you steal an apple, even if you risked a chance of having your hands cut off? The only way to prevent drug abuse is to held with treatment and prevention, and while fighting that battle, do what you can to prevent their lives getting even worse, by providing them with access to clean needles.
By targeting the social and economical factors which encourage spread of the virus, such as mentioned above, as well as lack of healthcare, and abstinence-only education (ref), and by cracking down on employment discrimination, we have the ability to dramatically improve the health and happiness of a million Americans currently living with AIDS, and countless individuals who will have increased odds of living AIDS-free.
