The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to push $50 billion into tackling AIDS, TB and malaria in the developing world over the next five years.

Reuters and the LA Times report the bill passed by 308 votes to 116. A press release from one of the bill’s backers calls it at 306 to 116. In the UK, the Guardian calls it at 308 to 166, even though there are only 435 representatives in the House. The official record goes with Reuters, or vice versa.

Anyway, it passed.

More important than this number crunching is the fact the bill would more than triple the amount currently authorized for the Bush-backed initiative. The bill would also remove the stipulation that a third of funds must be spend on abstinence education, although it contains a requirement for “balanced funding” of “abstinence, delay of sexual debut, monogamy, fidelity and partner reduction”.

In a generally positive editorial, the LA Times notes,

Now, if a program spends less than half of its budget for preventing sexual transmission on abstinence efforts, it has to send a report to Congress justifying the decision. That could have a chilling effect on programs that would rather spend the money on condoms but don’t want to risk having their funds cut off by conservative lawmakers.

Not everyone backed the bill, with some representatives trying to slash the amount of money pledged to $15 billion. Other are annoyed over the continued presence of abstinence funding.

Now a similar bill has to pass in the Senate.

Reaction below the fold…

“The legislation before us today will move us from the emergency phase to the sustainability phase in fighting AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria,” says House speaker Nancy Pelosi (press release). “There is a moral imperative to combat this epidemic.”

“The 2003 legislation firmly established the United States as the leading provider in the world of HIV/AIDS assistance for prevention, treatment and care,” says, Howard Berman, who introduced the bill (press release). “It has reminded the global community that Americans are a compassionate and generous people, and so has helped to repair our nation’s badly-damaged image overseas.

“No generalized HIV epidemic has ever been rolled back by a prevention strategy primarily based on condoms,” says Representative Chris Smith (Catholic News Agency). “Five years after [the programmes] first began, the efficacy and importance of promoting abstinence and ‘be faithful’ initiatives have been demonstrated. The evidence is compelling.”

“I’m disappointed the Majority turned back a balanced Republican alternative that would have authorized funding for the … program at the level requested by President Bush, while protecting taxpayers from funding programs that support abortions overseas,” says House Minority Leader John Boehner (Crosswalk)

“Despite evidence—and the efforts of Rep. Betty McCollum, experts and advocates around the world—the full House voted yesterday to reauthorize a $50 billion global HIV/AIDS relief initiative that threatens to further restrict, rather than support, expansion of HIV prevention through family planning services,” says Kelly Castagnaro, Director of Communications at the International Women’s Health Coalition (Feministe).

Image: AIDS virus (HIV). computer model produced by Richard Feldmann / NIH