U.S. African AIDS relief policy

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Killing Africa with Kindness: By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, 1 August 2000. With the announcement of a billion-dollar-a-year U.S. government loan program for African countries to buy AIDS drugs, the fight to deliver affordable drugs to people with HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world has entered its third phase. Through the UN, the industry has offered to provide discounted AIDS drugs to Africa — but at prices that remain wildly inflated over the cost of production, and far too high to be affordable by most Africans.
The Implications of Powell’s Africa Visit: Opinion by James W. Harris, The Perspective (Smyrna, GA), 4 June 2001. There seems to be serious doubt amongst many Africans as to whether Colin Powell really came away from this trip understanding their dismal plight. With the dreaded AIDS/HIV virus threatening to wipe out entire communities, one would have hoped that he was taking something substantial there to supplement the Bush Administration’s meager pledge of US$200 million.
Bush plays shell game with African lives: By Salih Booker, Foreign Policy in Focus, 24 June 2002. The administration justifies the smaller amounts and the go-slow timetable by the need to first show results. But, with 8,000 people around the world dying of AIDS daily (some 6,000 of them in sub-Saharan Africa), the results of Bush’s stalling action are crystal-clear: more dead people.
U.S. AIDS plan: a profit scheme: From Emily Ford, 20 February 2003. Much has been made in the big-business media of President Bush’s so-called Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, announced in his recent State of the Union address. The legacy of imperialist plunder and capitalist underdevelopment—not nature—is behind the pandemic unfolding in Africa, along with other regions of the world.
Boost in U.S. AIDS funding to Africa has strings attached: By Peter Thierjung, 4 March 2003. Four countries with some of the highest AIDS rates in the world are among the majority of sub-Saharan African countries that will not see a dime from the $15 billion scheme announced by President George Bush. At the behest of American pharmaceuticals, the one most effective thing to slow the slaughter: producing or buying low-cost generic versions of the expensive drug treatments that had vastly reduced the number of U.S. AIDS deaths, was blocked.
Americans Weep for Aids Orphans: New Vision, 11 July 2003 news report and comment. Bush said his AIDS initiative was an indication of the good heart of the American people. The USA government dictated to the drug companies that they had to supply the drugs to the government for under US$0.50. And the companies did. And even at that reduced price, the pharmaceutical companies made huge profits. But not for Africa: We must rake in the exorbitant profits and the wealth of Africa without the pesky Africans.