Pete Sessions: “I spoke last night about my concern over our inadequate attention given to the substantial problem of health care…”

“I spoke last night about my concern over our inadequate attention given to the substantial problem of health care transmission of AIDS in Africa. As part of this bill, we are moving forward with a $15 billion program to deal with AIDS in Africa. Some of the agencies involved have been too slow, frankly, to recognize how significant the transmission of AIDS is in Africa as a result of medical transmissions. It occurs in two primary ways. One, throughout Africa they are reusing needles for injections. When people come in, they are given shots. There is one story of an elementary classroom where all were injected with an immunization using the same needle, something we would not tolerate in America. As a matter of fact, we have taken extraordinary steps to make sure that no one in America who goes to a physician or doctor or hospital or clinic comes home infected with AIDS. We did that with the Ryan White Act. We dealt with hemophiliacs who have blood transfusions. We knew that was a major cause of the transmission of AIDS. We stopped that. We test all blood. We know it is clean or we will not allow it to be injected in someone's body. That is not true now in Africa. Twenty-five percent of the blood in Africa is transfused without being tested. We also know that in some countries in Africa as much as 40 percent of the adults have the HIV virus. We know that many more transfusions take place in Africa than in the United States.”