Six Reasons Why Obama's Proposal to Cut PEPFAR Funding Should Be Rejected by Congress

In this post in The Hill's "Congress Blog," Chris Collins, vice president and director of public policy for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, responds to a recently released analysis of adult mortality rates in African countries, which "found that between 2004 and 2008, in those nations where the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was most active, the odds of death were about 20 percent lower than in other countries in the region." He writes, "It was one more piece in the growing collection of evidence that PEPFAR has been a tremendously successful program, advancing U.S. humanitarian and diplomatic priorities and saving millions of lives." Collins continues, "That is why the proposal in President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget to cut bi-lateral HIV programming through PEPFAR by nearly $550 million, or 11 percent, has stunned so many on Capitol Hill and in the global health community."