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| Call Senator Lugar and e-mail your Member of Congress to ask for support for the best possible PEPFAR reauthorization bill Tuesday, February 26th is Youth AIDS Day, and people and groups around the country need you to take five minutes to help pass legislation that will save millions of lives worldwide. In the next few weeks, Congress will consider reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, President Bush’s 2003 proposal to treat 2 million people with AIDS and prevent 7 million HIV infections by the end of 2008. This plan expires at the end of this year, and must be continued. There are two things you can do today to make sure this PEPFAR legislation passes: First, email your Members of Congress and ask them to support reauthorization of the US Global AIDS Initiative (PEPFAR)? Second, please call Senator Lugar, the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is drafting the Senate bill at this time, and ask him to support a bill modeled on the one that is being considered by the House? Click here to send an email to your Member of Congress. Then, call Senator Lugar at 202-224-5641. Here’s a sample script, but you should feel free to modify it: "Hi,
my name is _______ and I'm from ___(organization)___. Today is Youth
AIDS Day, and I'm calling to encourage Senator Lugar to work with
Senator Biden to craft a bill to reauthorize the President's Emergency
Plan for AIDS Relief. President Bush began this program in 2003, and it
has been an immense success and must continue. But we need to make sure
that we do the most good possible, and I hope Senator Lugar can support
a bill that continues the progress President Bush started - the bill
should include $50 billion over five years in funding, an end to the
abstinence-only funding earmark, treatment for four million people, and
train 140,000 new healthcare workers to address the key bottleneck to
treating the people we've promised to treat in Africa." The
PEPFAR reauthorization bill currently in the House includes $50 billion
over five years, which is sufficient funding to treat one-third of
people in need of treatment worldwide, begin to address the dire
shortage of healthcare workers, treat and prevent TB and malaria, the
leading killers of people with AIDS, and prevent HIV with
evidence-based programs instead of ideology.
Your Member of Congress and Senator Lugar need to hear from you that this bill must pass in order to save the most number of lives. Around the country, hundreds of thousands of people are waking up and seeing this email in their inbox. Each person is given an opportunity to take action; to do something to make sure that every person living with HIV has access to treatment to save their lives, and every person at risk for HIV infection has the tools needed to prevent infection. But of these hundreds of thousands of people, how many will take action? Knowledge is only power when you use that knowledge to win changes in the lives of people around the world. Will you be one of the people who take action? Can we count on you to email your Member of Congress and call Senator Lugar today to ensure that the US Global AIDS Plan is reauthorized, with the best possible language so that we do the most good around the world? Thank you for your hard work, ActionAid USA Advocates for Youth American Medical Student Association Americans for Informed Democracy Global AIDS Alliance Health GAP Physicians for Human Rights RESULTS Student Global AIDS Campaign University Coalitions for Global Health |
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