NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, January 9, 2017

As President-elect Trump considers submitting a fiscal year 2018 budget request to Congress, scores of government funding issues will be intensely debated. America’s investment in global health is one area that should stand outside the political fray.

There are few issues that have won such consistent bipartisan support or, at a fraction of 1 percent of the federal budget, have produced such concrete economic, security and humanitarian gains for the country and the world.

Global health programming has expanded significantly over the last two decades, with the U.S. playing a leadership role. As Vice President-elect Pence said during the 2008 reauthorization of the U.S. global AIDS program:

“The United States has a moral obligation to lead the world in confronting the pandemic of HIV/AIDS.”

The impact of these investments has been startling. Since 1990, the number of annual child deaths has been cut by more than one half. More than 18.2 million people are now receiving life-saving AIDS treatment. The malaria death rate among children under age 5 is down 69 percent since 2000. Efforts to diagnose and treat tuberculosis (TB), a disease that has plagued humanity for centuries, have saved millions of lives in the same period.