For Immediate Release:	February 20, 2003
For More Information:	Jodi Jacobson, Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), jjacobson@genderhealth.org, 301-270-1182
Sponsor Organization:	The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)
The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) joins other leading international HIV/AIDS, women’s health, and development organizations in rejecting any and all attempts by the Bush Administration to further restrict U.S. money in the fight against global AIDS.
A recent White House announcement indicates President Bush’s intention to apply some or all of the “Mexico City Policy” restrictions to U.S. funding for AIDS programs overseas, limiting the number and types of organizations to receive U.S. assistance. This announcement in fact expands restrictions on U.S. foreign aid by broadening a policy tha until now, had been used to restrict essential international family planning funds, and now will be expanded to include HIV/AIDS funds, and possibly other foreign aid funding streams. This application of the “Mexico City Policy” will effectively prevent the integration of family planning, maternal health, and HIV/AIDS services at the community level, to the detriment of those most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. As the President has correctly acknowledged, the global AIDS epidemic is a devastating humanitarian crisis deserving urgent attention and resources from the United States. “What he seems not to realize,” says Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director of CHANGE, “is that women now represent half of those infected with HIV worldwide and 55 percent of those in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the AIDS epidemic has taken the greatest toll. In the majority of countries, new infections are rising fastest among women and adolescent girls, who, because of social and economic disparities and cultural practices such as child marriage often have no choice in determining when and with whom they have sexual relations. In fact, in many countries today, married monogamous women are at highest risk of HIV infection due to the behavior of their husbands. Family planning and maternal and child health services are the first places to which they turn for information and advice.” For the majority of women around the world, access to health care is severely limited and the availability of integrated reproductive health and HIV prevention programs and services can mean the difference between life and death. Among other things, women at risk of HIV infection need information and training for negotiating safer sex and programs to combat sexual violence and coercion, a leading contributor to high rates of infection. They also need and deserve access to family planning and other essential reproductive health services. Integrated health services provide women with a confidential and trusted source of voluntary counseling and testing, services to prevent mother-to-child transmission, advice on breast-feeding, infant care, and other critical services free from the stigma usually associated with stand-alone HIV/AIDS programs. Comprehensive health care is vital to women’s lives, and to slowing the impact of AIDS. “Women seeking contraceptive methods and other forms of reproductive health services are sexually active and therefore by definition at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, “ noted Jacobson. “Such services offer a point of entry to stemming the spread of HIV worldwide. It is not only unrealistic to separate women’s health needs, or expect women to seek services separately, as Bush’s “Mexico City Policy” would have them do…it is ineffective from a public health standpoint, and morally indefensible given the certain consequences. Any effort to limit the scope of established community health organizations and family planning services will result in untold numbers of HIV infections and undermine the President’s stated goal to stem the tide of the global AIDS epidemic,” Jacobson said. --ends-- The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) conducts research, policy analysis, and advocacy on reproductive health and HIV, and works on the ground in several countries to monitor and analyze U.S. international funding, policies and programs in the areas of family planning, STI and HIV prevention, and gender violence. CHANGE advocates for international health and population policies that promote women’s rights and autonomy. CHANGE works to advance gender-sensitive STI and HIV prevention strategies within U.S. international policies and programs and to ensure that international HIV/AIDS programs supported by the US government take into account the specific impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. Key contacts: Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director, jjacobson@genderhealth.org; Sarah Joy Albrecht, Legislative and Policy Associate, salbrecht@genderhealth.org.