Public-health officials and AIDS advocates are looking forward to a renewed interest in domestic HIV/AIDS issues in the USA as a result of Barack Obama’s election to the White House. Obama pledged to develop a national HIV/AIDS strategy that would better coordinate federal efforts against the disease and enhance programmes to reduce infections, increase access to care and address health disparities.The President-elect also promised to target HIV/AIDS resources to minority communities, fund housing programmes for HIV positive individuals and expand research for HIV/AIDS prevention.

A key element of the plan is improved access to health care coverage as part of Obama’s goal of reforming the US health-care system. “His plan will ensure that people living with HIV have access to lifesaving treatment and care”, campaign documents indicate.

The US is grappling with an HIV annual incidence rate of 56 300—a number that is 40% higher than previously thought. The new figure is the result of new incidence testing methodologies developed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that more accurately determine when an infection was contracted.

CDC officials say they hope the new tool can help pinpoint growth in the epidemic so resources can be marshaled more efficiently to where they are needed most. The test also is being tried in Africa under the PEPFAR programme. (more…)

President-elect Barack Obama signalled what is being viewed as a strong commitment to health-care reform Nov 19 by choosing former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to head the federal department of Health and Human Services. Ron Pollack, executive director of the health reform advocate group Families US said Daschle’s naming is “the best news possible for those who want to achieve meaningful health care reform”. He added, “Senator Daschle has a deep commitment to securing high-quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in our nation. His new leadership position confirms that the incoming Obama Administration has made health care reform a top and early priority for action in 2009″.

After Senate confirmation, Daschle would oversee the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health.

During the transition, Daschle is heading Obama’s health-care working group.

Although the economic crisis is expected to slow work on health care reform, Capitol Hill is starting to prepare for the process. Key health legislator Edward Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, appointed former presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton to chair a task force on health insurance reform.

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More than 2 months remain until the inauguration of the USA’s president-elect, but already there are signals that Barack Obama will move quickly to make important changes to the nation’s health care policy. Obama has yet to publicly name his picks for key administration posts, including secretary of Health and Human Services and commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. But members of his transition team indicated this week that once in office, president-elect Obama will likely issue executive orders reversing some Bush administration policies, including restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and rules that limit USA-funded international family-planning groups from discussing abortion, among others.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action”, John Podesta, head of Obama’s transition team, told Fox News this week.

Just days after taking office in 2001, President George W Bush issued an executive order restoring the “Mexico City Policy” adopted in 1984 by then-president Ronald Reagan, which required non-governmental organisations who receive federal funding to agree not to promote abortion as a family-planning method. The policy has become known as the global “gag rule”.

Victims of the gag rule include the United Nations Population Fund, which lost some US$200 million in funding in 2002. (more…)

Also this week, calls for Obama to take immediate action on health-care reform were boosted when Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, released on Wednesday a comprehensive outline for guaranteed health insurance for all residents of the USA. With the exception of a stipulation for mandatory coverage for all individuals, Baucus’s plan is similar to Obama’s and could help convince Congress and the president-elect to take up the issue of reform during the first half of next year.

“In 2009, Congress must take up and act on meaningful health reform legislation that achieves coverage for every American while also addressing the underlying problems in our health system. The urgency of this task has become undeniable”, wrote Baucus.

Baucus and fellow members of the finance committee have already held nine hearings this year on health-care reform, and many experts suspect that early momentum is crucial going into the new presidential term. Still others believe reform impossible without a substantial economic turnaround, something that could take months, or longer.    (more…)

The campaign is finally over. In what has turned out to be an historical election, voters in the USA have chosen Sen Barack Obama by a wide margin to become the nation’s 44th president. It is the first time in history that an African-American has been elected to serve that country’s highest political office.

In Chicago, hundreds of thousands of supporters young and old gathered in Grant Park to hear Obama deliver his victory speech on the same grounds as the tumultuous and violent events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention only four decades ago. Obama’s speech, which some commentators have compared to the language of former President Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) and with the cadence of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, moved most of the audience and many of those glued to television screens across the country to tears.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr, son of civil rights leader and the former presidential candidate of the same name, called Obama’s sweeping victory a “peaceful revolution”.

www.barackobama.com

Across the USA, Obama supporters took to the streets in celebration. An impromptu crowd amassed in front of the White House in the nation’s capital. Obama’s successful bid to occupy that famous residency has been one of the most dynamic and unpredictable political events in the nation’s modern history. (more…)