[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 15, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S314]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            HIV/AIDS FUNDING

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise this morning to draw my colleagues' 
attention once again to an issue that is plaguing our world. That 
issue, of course, is the tragic global HIV/AIDS endemic.
  The Los Angeles Times newspaper ran a particularly heartbreaking 
piece this past Sunday that detailed the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. I 
will take a moment to read an excerpt from this article, as it paints a 
very disturbing and very accurate picture of the reality of this global 
HIV/AIDS crisis. This is last Sunday's Los Angeles Times:

       The mother rises from her deathbed to bury her baby boy. 
     She slumps in a wheelchair borrowed for the occasion, and an 
     elderly relative must help hold her head up so that she can 
     watch the body descend into the red earth.
       The casket is heartbreakingly small, and though Evelyn 
     Matule weeps for her child, her eyes are dry. Sickness and 
     despair have stolen her tears.
       Alfred is the second boy Matule has lost in a year to a 
     disease also racking her body: AIDS. A toddler's coffin is 
     mercifully inexpensive, but the earlier death left Matule and 
     her family so strapped that they will serve only butter 
     sandwiches to the few guests.
       On one side of the boy's grave in this township outside the 
     city of Welkom in central South Africa are fresh heaps of 
     loam, each new grave marked with numbered aluminum tags, baby 
     rattles and prescription bottles for remedies that didn't 
     save the victims. A dozen open graves lie to the right. In 
     less than a month, they will be full.

  Mr. President, this is the reality of AIDS. Today, one in every nine 
South Africans--that's 4.7 million people--has AIDS. Last year alone, 
2.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa died from AIDS. Furthermore, 
over 34 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to 
AIDS or related causes.
  As the LA Times article points out, the City of Johannesburg is 
expecting to have 70,000 burials a year by 2010--that's up from 15,000 
burials just five years ago.
  This is having a huge economic impact on the African Continent, both 
in terms of a reduced agricultural capacity and also just in terms of 
the costs of burials and funerals. As morbid as it may sound, there is, 
quite literally, a shortage of undertakers and cemetery space in 
Africa, and it is adding to an already tragic health crisis.
  As we all know, Mr. President, HIV/AIDS is a global problem, with a 
huge impact and devastating impact in our own Hemisphere. I have seen 
it in Haiti, a nation with the second highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in 
the world--second only to sub-Saharan Africa. My wife, Fran, and I have 
traveled to Haiti nearly ten times--and we are planning another trip 
for next week. We have seen, first-hand, the devastation of HIV/AIDS--
we've seen the children, the babies, and the families. It is a true 
human tragedy.
  An estimated 300,000 Haitians--and that is out of a population of 
only 8 million--are currently living with AIDS. According to the 
Centers for Disease Control projections, Haiti will experience up to 
44,000 new HIV/AIDS cases this year. That is at least 4,000 more than 
the number expected in the United States, a nation with a population 
nearly 35 times larger than Haiti's.
  This disease is having a profoundly devastating impact on Haitian 
children. Already, estimates suggest that HIV/AIDS has orphaned 163,000 
children in Haiti, a number expected to skyrocket to between 323,000 to 
393,000 over the next 10 years. Haiti also continues to suffer from an 
unbelievably high HIV transmission rate from mother to child, and, of 
course, two-thirds of the infants born with the disease, we know, will 
die within the first year.
  This truly is a tragedy because we know that the transmission of HIV 
from mother to child can be substantially reduced with proper 
counseling and proper medication. The reality is that millions of 
children are dying, and we can do something about it. We must do 
something about this.
  I was pleased, to join my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator 
Durbin, in leading an effort to show the Senate Appropriations 
Committee our support for increasing funds to combat this horrible 
disease. In a letter to the Committee signed by fourteen fellow 
Senators, we have asked for the full appropriation of $236.4 million in 
additional FY03 funds to fight global AIDS. This would bring our 
nation's total 2003 AIDS spending level to $1.5 billion--that's a 50 
percent increase over 2002 levels.
  Furthermore, I look forward to working with Majority Leader Frist and 
Senator Santorum in the coming months to not only increase our overall 
contribution to fight global AIDS, but to work to ensure that our funds 
are being spent in the most efficient and effective ways.
  At the end of the day, I believe that all of us in this Chamber are 
working toward the same objective--and that is to alleviate the 
continued suffering caused by this epidemic.
  Quite simply, we have a moral obligation to do so, and I believe we 
must show the leadership by tackling the problem in our backyard and 
around the world. I thank all of my colleagues who have come to this 
Chamber in the past to talk about this issue and show their support for 
dealing with this problem. We must continue to act. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

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