With your help, several harmful amendments to cut funding and strip out key provisions were defeated.  As Senator Biden said on the floor of the Senate “Opponents voices were drowned by reason and evidence.”

Students have been on the leading edge of advocacy to strengthen health systems and expand the US Global AIDS plan.  Thanks to your efforts, PEPFAR is a sound strategy to address the massive shortage of health workers and more than triples the funding of the original program passed in 2003! Five years ago AIDS threatened to destroy entire generations. The increased funding promises to save millions of lives. In additon, the discriminatory HIV+ Travel Ban will be repealed through this bill.

Its been so exciting and such a pleasure to work with all of you on this effort.  I am continually amazed by the commitment and passion of student members of PHR and your ability to juggle human rights advocacy and your education.  Your voices have truly made a difference.  So take a moment to pat yourselves on the back for a job well done and celebrate this victory.  You deserve it.

Our work to advance the right to health and dignity for all is far from over.  Once the bill is signed into law, we’ll continue to monitor PEPFAR’s progress and implementation.  We’ll need your help to halt the feminization of AIDS, provide evidence based treatment and prevention for injecting drug users and continue our work to build strong health systems.  I look forward to continuing the fight with all of you!

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Just a over a month ago, I began writing about the legislative stalemate we were facing in the Senate. Not ones to sit on the side lines, PHR Student members answered the call to action by calling and emailing Senators Reid and McConnell to get the bill moving. But that still wasn’t enough. We hit the editorial pages of newspapers with letters to the editor and op-eds calling for PEPFAR’s speedy passage. June Chae, leader of the University of Illinois in Chicago PHR Chapter got her letter printed in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Even with overwhelming public support in the newspapers and bi-partisan support on Capitol Hill, obstructionist Senators still played politics with PEPFAR. AIDS advocates around the country decided to take it to the streets. Students in DC, Boston, and Chicago held Global AIDS superhero rallies to thank Senators who had been champions of the bill and hold accountable those who refused to act. Political leaders in DC finally began to get the message: Stop playing politics with peoples lives and pass PEPFAR now!  Senator Reid called for a 72 hour deadline to end negotiations and bring the bill to  vote. Within hours of the rallies being announced, Senator Obama put a statement on his website calling for PEPFAR to be passed. Senator McCain went on the record, saying he would do everything he could to pass PEPFAR.

Our political leaders in DC like Senators Reid, McCain and Obama heard the voice of health professionals students along with the voices from the AIDS advocacy community. Last week the Senate burned the midnight oil to finally reach an agreement to move the bill forward at 11:21 PM. Unfortunately, some bad amendments to the bill that would cut funding or eliminate key provisions like the removal of the HIV+ travel ban are expected. The good news is, PHR members and our allies in the AIDS advocacy community have made their voices heard, and we fully expect those amendments to be defeated. We will be watching closely today as the final bill is voted on.

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Click the photo to see more photos from the rally on Flickr.

Senator Kerry has been instrumental in working to eliminate the discriminatory HIV+ travel ban for people entering the US. The harmful policy has no public health basis and was passed in a climate of fear during the 80’s. Senator Kerry’s legislation to repeal the ban has been incorporated into the current version of PEPFAR in the Senate.

Thanks to the work of Senator Kerry and other leaders like Senator Reid, Obama, McCain, Biden and Lugar, the Senate version of PEPFAR is starting to move again. There remain a few sticking points with concerns raised by Senator Tom Coburn and a small group of conservatives before the bill is brought up for a vote.

Our hope is that a fully funded $50 billion dollar clean bill with provisions to train and retain 140,000 new health care professionals, that eliminates the abstinence-only earmark, that integrates family planning and HIV services and eliminates the HIV+ travel ban, is brought to the floor for a vote soon. Our fear is that a small group of conservative Senators will continue to base AIDS policy on political formulas and religious ideology.

As the legislative process continues to shake out in DC, I’ll work to keep you up to date here on the blog. We will need the help of health professional students to defend the final bill from harmful amendments and to fight to keep PEPFAR focused on evidence and human rights-based treatment, prevention and care. Please keep a look out for action alerts and emails soon.

Check out this great video from the rally our friends at AMSA held in Chicago for Senators Obama and Durbin.

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Senator Durbin is the Assistant Majority Leader (Majority Whip) in the Senate, and sets the legislative agenda and calendar. He has the power to get PEPFAR moving again and we need him to break the legislative gridlock. Senator Durbin has been a champion of eradicating global AIDS and is the author of the African Health Capacity Investment Act for sub Saharan Africa,
a bill PHR supports.
Students have secured the support of Deans and Faculty at their schools to send a letter to Senator Durbin calling for speedy passage of PEPFAR. A few students have also been sending letters to the editor of their local papers. June Chae, leader of the newly formed University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, had her letter printed last week in the Chicago Sun-Times. In the letter, she calls attention to the need to integrate family planning and HIV/AIDS services, and asks Senator Durbin to champion PEPFAR reauthorization.

The U.S. Senate must recognize this urgency and the need for specific prevention measures needed for women. For example, the current President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief bill that is stalled in the Senate should integrate family planning and HIV/AIDS services to improve health care access for women. We need Sen. Richard J. Durbin to become the voice for the voiceless and use his influence as the No. 2 leader in the Senate to pass this lifesaving legislation.

Senator Coburn, one of the opponents of the current PEPFAR bill, is also getting some media coverage. The Politico ran an article this week analyzing the current political landscape.

Focusing on treatment alone is not enough, [Jennifer Delany of Global Action for Children] said. “You can’t just wait for people to get infected and then offer treatment,” she said. “Treatment should be the last line of defense.”

The Daily Kos posted a detailed summary of the PEPFAR reauthorization process on their front page. With their thousands of daily readers the story is now officially out in the blogosphere.

We’ll need to continue to keep the pressure on Congress to pass this bill now, so keep a look out on the blog and your email for information on how you can help.

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Despite the fact that the International Criminal Court issued still-active warrants for suspects in May of 2007, the Sudanese Government still rejects their legal obligation to turn in the suspects.

As the article states, ICC suspects Harun and Kushayb “face 51 charges, including murder, rape and forced expulsions” in Darfur, where “200,000 to 300,000 people have died in the conflict … and 2.5 million have been displaced since it began in 2003.”

PHR calls for justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators in Darfur — in addition to demanding the cessation of attacks on innocent civilians by the Sudanese Government. Only with all three of these things is there the possibility of long-term peace and stability.

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The epidemic does not follow predictable patterns. In some countries, it is a generalized problem; in others, it is concentrated in a particular region or population subgroup. Last year, the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences, told Congress that it should eliminate fixed directives for PEPFAR. Better to let individual country teams tailor programs to fit their particular needs, the institute said. Last month, the Government Accountability Office reported on a survey of 22 international HIV-AIDS experts, most of whom backed a more flexible approach. The GAO report raised particular questions about the efficacy of a requirement, inserted in the current PEPFAR law by conservative Republicans, that requires 33 percent of all prevention funds to be spent teaching abstinence and fidelity.

In addition, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed an Op-Ed by Health Action AIDS Campaign Advisor Wendy Johnson. She highlights the need for the US to support the Heroic efforts of doctors and other health professionals on the front lines of the fight against AIDS.

Dr. Albertino Mualique is a soldier in one war that the United States is actually poised to win, and he needs a surge to definitively gain the upper hand. But some members of the Senate want to abandon him just when he most urgently requires their support.

The 28-year-old doctor is battling tirelessly against the AIDS epidemic in Mozambique, one of 10 countries most afflicted by HIV. In the two rural districts where he works, he is the only physician for more than 150,000 people, nearly 25 percent of whom are infected with the virus.

Combine these two articles with Pat Daoust’s Boston Globe op-ed and you can see the overwhelming public support for passing PEPFAR. Now that Congress is back in session after its Memorial Day recess, we are working on several fronts to get this bill moving again. Keep your eyes open for additional ways you can join the effort through our online action center.

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Danielle has asked me if I would start posting from time to time about blogging and using web technology. To kick things off, I’d like to tell you about using RSS. If you already are reading the Student Blog with an RSS reader, then skip to the end and check out the bonus download.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication—which is a powerful web technology, especially useful for people who are busy and need a fast and efficient method of keeping up with the PHR Student Blog and the latest in health and human rights from other blogs and news sites. Health professional students who are also human rights activists need efficient methods of staying informed about the issues they are working on and about when it is crucial to act.

With RSS you can receive new information from this blog and many other websites at one central website or desktop application. Rather than using valuable time to visit your favorite websites to find out if there’s anything new, the information comes to you as soon as it becomes available.

Here’s a fun three and half minute video that nicely explains RSS feeds and how you can start receiving them.

So once again, there’s just two steps:

1. Sign up for a reader: I suggest Google Reader or Bloglines.

2. Set up a connection between your reader and the websites you want to follow.

On the Student Blog, you can use the “Subscribe” link, which is the right-most tab above the banner image.

For a much more detailed discussion of RSS and many more things you can do with it, check out this blog post by Michael Pick.

The Bonus Download

If you’d like to try using RSS, here’s a bonus download to help you hit the ground running. Download this OPML file by right-clicking (pc) or cntrl-clicking (mac) on the the link in this sentence and selecting “Save link as…” or “Save target as…” You can then import the file into your RSS reader to stock it with feeds from the Student Blog and from other sites that will help you stay current on health and human rights. Just remember what Lee LeFever said in RSS in Plain English: “Be careful. It’s addictive.” Feel free to organize the list or to thin it if you find it’s too much for you to keep track of.

Instructions are below the cut.

To import the file into Google Reader follow these steps:

1. Login to Google Reader.
2. Click “Settings” in the upper right corner of the window.
3. On the Settings page, click “Import/Export.”
4. Click the “Choose File” button to browse for the file called “PHRStudentProgramFeeds.opml,” which you have downloaded.
5. Select “PHRStudentProgramFeeds.opml” and then click the “Upload” button.
6. Once the upload is complete, click on the “Back to Google Reader” link, and you will find your reader will be stocked.*

If you’re using Bloglines, follow these steps:

1. Login to Bloglines.
2. Click on the “My Feeds” tab at the top of the screen, on the left side.
3. In the left-hand column, under “Additional Features” click on “Import Subscriptions.”
4. In the wider, right-hand column, click on the “Browse…” button to browse for the file called “PHR StudentProgramFeeds.opml,” which you have downloaded.
5. Select “PHRStudentProgramFeeds.opml,” and click the “Import” button.
6. Your feeds should now appear in the left-hand column.*

*Note: At first, some websites may appear as a URL in the site list in the left-hand column. In a short while URL’s will change to website or feed names and will then function properly if they did not before.

Disclaimer: The list of websites in the opml file is not exhaustive. PHR is responsible for the content published at the domains http://physiciansforhumanrights.org, http://students.phrblog.org, and http://actnow-phr.org. PHR does not necessarily agree with or endorse the information and views published at the other domains included in this OPML.

If you have questions about how to do this or about how to import the feeds into another reader, just leave a comment or drop me a line at bgreenberg at phrusa dot org.

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Peru’s persistently high maternal mortality ratio, which is the second highest in South America, provides a telling indicator not only of the social exclusion faced by rural, and especially indigenous, women in Peru but also—and crucially—of structural deficiencies and inequities in the health system.

Please view this important and moving video and pass it on.

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I wanted to write you a brief note before you start the summer. I’m bet many of you have amazing projects lined up for the summer. Speaking of amazing I want to just let you know that your work for PHR as activists and messengers is also amazing. I am not sure if you fully appreciate the depth of how powerful the message is when it comes from medical and other health professional students. Your work on our Health Action AIDS Campaign and Darfur Survival Campaign really helps save lives: it is that real, and I want to say thanks. And after you graduate, human rights issues will need your continued involvement.

Medical students in Zimbabwe, who have heard about your accomplishments, have requested our assistance to found an organization similar to the PHR Student Program. These students will now have a platform to help them respond to the human rights crisis engulfing Zimbabwe. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery—you are rightly recognized .

Now that I have been here a half a year, I finally have some time to visit with your chapters. Next year when I am on the road, which is often, I would like to come by and meet or grab dinner with your chapters and talk about what is happening at PHR in a more personal way. I’ll even buy the food!

I hope that things are already set for your Chapter to take off running next fall. Have a great summer. If you are in Cambridge, please come by the office and stop in to say hi.

PS. I look forward to seeing all of you at the national conference next year.

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The United States could do a better job saving their lives if our leaders would place the best public health practices over political compromise…. Research has repeatedly shown that integration of HIV services within the context of women’s health could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and, if pregnant, their newborns. The entry point to the healthcare system for many African women is the family-planning clinic. Timely access to messages on HIV prevention and life-saving treatments can slow the AIDS pandemic.

Pat Daoust’s article also underscores the urgency of passing the PEPFAR bill quickly through the Senate.

Three weeks ago I walked through a women’s ward in the national referral hospital in Uganda with a local physician. I held the hand of a beautiful 18-year-old woman diagnosed with end-stage AIDS. Through the look of hope in her eyes, she begged not to be yet another statistic lost to a preventable and treatable disease. The majority of the women we assessed were dying of AIDS. Seventy percent of those admitted to the hospital share this fate.

If you have not already contacted your Senators about PEPFAR reauthorization, please send them an email today.

If you already have taken action, then please forward the action alert to friends, colleagues and classmates and ask them to take action, too.

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