03 April 2008
House Approves President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
Bush looks forward to working with Senate to consider PEPFAR legislation
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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Bucharest, Romania)
April 3, 2008
STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY
Today the House of Representatives approved the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act. This strong bipartisan vote advances the reauthorization of the life-saving work of the PEPFAR program.
This legislation preserves the important principles that have made PEPFAR successful. Since 2003, this program has supported life-saving antiretroviral treatment for over 1.4 million people around the world, and supported prevention of mother-to-child transmission services for women during more than 10 million pregnancies. Through the successful A-B-C approach to prevention, PEPFAR is saving lives and helping to prevent the spread of this horrible epidemic.
The President wants to thank the members of Congress who supported this legislation, particularly the hard work of House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman and Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. He looks forward to working with the Senate, and hopes they will consider PEPFAR legislation soon.
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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
