[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12609]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HIV/AIDS PANDEMIC

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with my 
colleagues to draw attention to the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic.
  This week, the 16th Annual International AIDS Conference was held in 
Barcelona, Spain. The conference highlighted the fact that, contrary to 
previous beliefs, the global AIDS crisis has not peaked and is only 
getting worse. According to UNAIDS, 40 million people live with HIV/
AIDS in the world today; 28.5 million of them are in sub-Saharan 
Africa. Three million of those infected are children younger than 15. 
Last year, five million people were newly infected with HIV, and three 
million died of AIDS.
  In Botswana, almost 44 percent of pregnant women visiting clinics in 
urban areas are HIV positive. In several countries in West Africa--such 
as Burkina Faso and Cameroon--the adult prevalence rate surpassed 5 
percent, a level that many experts agree precedes a larger scale 
epidemic. This devastating disease is erasing decades of development 
and cutting life expectancy by nearly half in the most affected areas.
  These statistics are staggering, but they also obscure the human cost 
of the epidemic. Infected teachers pass away and are unable to transmit 
knowledge to the next generation. Business owners die and their 
enterprises die with them. The deaths of trained professionals, such as 
nurses, civil servants, and lawyers mean that their skills disappear 
from their country. By 2010, UNAIDS believes that twenty million 
children in sub-Saharan Africa will have lost at least one of their 
parents to AIDS. Mr. Speaker, entire societies are being destroyed by 
this terrible virus.
  There are a few--very few--signs of hope. Some countries, such as 
Uganda, have stemmed the rate of infection and have averted a wider 
catastrophe. Other countries are finally acknowledging that HIV/AIDS 
poses a serious risk to their stability and are beginning to remove the 
stigma associated with the disease. Last week, the government of 
Nigeria announced that it had ordered free HIV/AIDS test for half a 
million of its citizens. And programs that seek to prevent the 
transmission of the virus from mothers to children are proving to be 
effective and are being implemented on a larger scale.
  But Mr. Speaker, there is more that we as the sole superpower can do 
to stop the spread of this scourge that threatens the stability of many 
parts of the globe. We can increase assistance for education and 
prevention efforts and involve more sectors of societies in such 
prevention campaigns. We can continue to lower the cost of life-saving 
anti-retroviral drugs so that people in developing countries have the 
hope of treatment and are more willing to learn their HIV status. We 
can support the research and development of an effective, practical 
vaccine for HIV. And we can increase the United States' contributions 
for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
  What we are doing simply is not enough to stem this global massacre. 
As a world leader, we must step up our efforts and contributions in 
this global struggle.

                          ____________________