Reply #1: If U.S. Blacks were a nation they could receive U.S. dollars for AIDS

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President Bush Historic $48 Billion Funding Of Global AIDS Bill

July 31, 2008 12:29 a.m. EST

Nidhi Sharma - AHN News Writer

Washington D.C. (AHN) - President George Bush on Wednesday approved $48 billion for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world for next five years.

The amount authorized for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the successful U.S. global AIDS program, is $18 billion more than what Bush had requested. The measure will triple funding for these three diseases. It would replace and expand the current $15 billion program started by the President in 2003. That act expires at the end of September.

The new goal is to prevent 12 million new HIV infections, treat more than two million with AIDS drugs, support care for 12 million, and train at least 140,000 new health care workers. According to a statement by the White House, the president said it "is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."

The funds will assist in buying lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment for nearly 1.7 million people from Asia to eastern Europe. The new program will also drop a requirement for one-third of the anti-AIDS funds to be used to promote sexual abstinence and will lifts a ban on HIV-positive foreigners entering the United States.