Washington , DC – Congresswoman Barbara Lee today responded to the Bush Administration’s recent admission that the United States ’ Global HIV/AIDS initiative has so far only placed 25,000 people on anti-retroviral treatment despite the urgency of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and despite the targets set by Congress.

 “It's been almost 21 months since the President stood before the American people during his 2003 State of the Union Address promising to provide life-saving anti-retroviral treatment to 2 million people in the next five years,” Lee said, “and all we have to show for our efforts is just barely 25,000 people on treatment.  Since the President's announcement, over 5 million people throughout the world have died of HIV/AIDS.  I can only ask, where is the sense of urgency?”

“When we passed our global HIV/AIDS legislation last year we set a target of putting 500,000 people on treatment by the end of fiscal year 2004.  The Administration's progress so far is just shameful, and in my opinion is yet another indication of this President's lack of leadership.”

 “While challenges do indeed exist to rapidly scale up our treatment programs, they are not insurmountable challenges.  If this administration does not treat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic for what it really is, then we will have a much larger problem on our hands and a much higher death toll in the coming months and years.”

 “Unfortunately the greatest burden of all will fall on those who are the most vulnerable to this dreaded disease, the millions of children who have been and will be orphaned by this horrible disease.”

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