AIDS funding

According to an article in The New York Times the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a compromise between House leaders and the White House that would authorize $50 billion over the next five years to support the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
This is a significant increase over the $19 billion that was appropriated for the first five years of this program and also an increase over the $30 billion that the President had originally proposed to fight only AIDS. This new program would authorize $37 billion to $41 billion for the fight against AIDS.
The program that started five years ago has already provided drug treatment for 1.5 million men, women, and children.
Some of the money will be used to train 144,000 new health care workers to care for those with HIV. That is just the tip of the iceberg though considering the shortage of health care workers in the developing world is in the millions.
A requirement of the new program is that countries use part of the funds for campaigns for abstinence until marriage and fidelity thereafter and the use of condoms.
Countries will have to report if funding for those programs falls below a certain percentage.
This may sound harsh, but it is an improvement over the previous requirement that a full one-third of the funding be dedicated to abstinence and fidelity education.
However, even $50 billion will not meet the need of universal treatment for all who are HIV positive.
One might ask why even bother with such a program if it won’t completely solve the problem and the problem is over there not here.
Since this program is not going to eradicate the HIV virus and AIDS why throw so much money at it?
To answer that question, AIDS research benefits everyone. Also some might argue that it’s our duty on a basic human level to offer help to those who cannot help themselves.