AIDS is a global catastrophe, wreaking havoc on families, communities and countries around the world. In 2007, an estimated 33 million people were living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Last year, 2.5 million adults and children were newly infected with HIV, and more than 2.1 million people lost their lives to AIDS. Due to a combination of discrimination, lack of access to health care and other factors - such as gender-based violence - HIV infections are rising rapidly among women and girls, who now represent 50 percent of those infected worldwide and 60 percent of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2003, Congress passed the U.S. Global AIDS Act, which created the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a five year, $15 billion program intended to expand prevention, treatment, and care services for countries heavily affected by HIV and AIDS. This is the world's largest health program in history dedicated to combating a single disease. Since 2003, the U.S. has actually invested $23 billion dollars in PEPFAR programs, well above the original amount authorized by Congress. Yet ideologically-motivated restrictions in the original law governing PEPFAR require spending vast sums of U.S. funding on abstinence-until-marriage programs that have been discredited by numerous studies, including government-funded studies conducted by the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the Government Accountability Office. Other restrictions undermine efforts to reach vulnerable groups such as sex workers.

Congress is currently considering new legislation to spend $50 billion for global AIDS for the next five years. We must ensure the new law supports comprehensive, evidence-based prevention that effectively utilizes taxpayer money.