Via the FP Passport blog (by the by, if you aren't reading a general global news blog already, the folks at FP do as good a job as anybody out there with equal measures of humor and insight) - it appears that congress is looking at both expanding and amending PEPFAR - increases of funds to $50 billion and loosening of some of those cumbersome abstinence requirements, which as the article points out were never as ennobled as their supporters liked to claim or as restrictive as their detractors liked to bemoan. Like most projects of its ilk, PEPFAR has an equal number of proponents and detractors and there are all kinds of ways to splice the numbers as to how much "aid" is actually getting where and whether or not its actually an increase, etc., etc., etc. - I won't go into that here. Point being, Bush is obviously thinking legacy and looking everywhere except Iraq, and if that means he starts pushing the HIV/AIDS agenda then who am I to complain - I know a number of individuals and organizations that have directly benefitted from PEPFAR, by which I mean they have been able to keep the lights on and the doors open as they minister to those suffering with HIV/AIDS so hopefully this will push through. This, however, will probably still be true.
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