Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Aug. 3
The Washington Post on a threat to PEPFAR
President George W. Bush could not have foreseen how successful the outcome would be when he told aides in 2002 he wanted a “game changer” to fight the scourge of HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere. But that is what he accomplished with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which he launched in 2003. To date, it is credited with having saved more than 25 million lives.
So it now makes little sense that this impressive public health achievement is being disrupted by political wrangling on Capitol Hill. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a longtime backer of PEPFAR, is threatening to block a five-year reauthorization to make a tangential point about abortion funding, and some conservative groups are vowing to count the issue in their scoring of members’ voting records — which means supporting the program could be used as a weapon against them at…