Letter: Thanks to Burr, Tillis for Global Fund support

Kudos to Senators Burr and Tillis for their independence and leadership in adding their names to the Senate sign-on letter in support of appropriations for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. We need them to continue their leadership by adding their names to the maternal and child health sign-on letter which supports robust funding for MCH including Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), and for Nutrition in Global Health.

These investments in MCH and nutrition are the foundation for the U.S. goal of ending preventable child and maternal deaths within a generation. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has developed benchmark targets for that goal and an evidence-based roadmap to save an additional 15 million child lives and 600,000 women’s lives by the year 2020.

These achievable goals can be reached with congressional support for child survival and nutrition programs. In close collaboration with partner countries and public-private partnerships like Gavi, we are seeing the lives of children saved as a result of U.S. assistance. Since 1990, the annual number of under-five deaths among children has drastically fallen, from 12.6 million to 5.9 million in 2015.

The benefits of these programs stand on their own merits. In addition, they help provide both increased security for the United States by stemming some of the root causes of extremism, and enhances prestige and image of the United States around the world.

Howard Berkowitz, Candler