Editorials / Opinion

Seattle Times letters to the editor

Support the Global Fund

A baby born with HIV has been cured, scientists announced Sunday. Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins’ Children’s Center in Baltimore is seen above. “Maybe we’ll be able to block this reservoir seeding,” Persaud said. (ASSOCIATED PRESS/JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICINE)

Thanks for the story on the American baby who has been cured of HIV [“Scientists say HIV baby apparently is cured now,” page one, March 4].

We still permit more than 300,000 babies to be born with the death sentence each year. We know how to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria makes the drugs available to do that.

The Global Fund has already said that it could virtually eliminate HIV in newborns by 2015. We need to be a part of the funding to make this possible. For every dollar we put in to do that, the fund raises two additional dollars.

And preventing the transmission of HIV is an incredible money-saving practice. [There are] no further costs to fight HIV and AIDS in that child as it grows, and that child will not pass on the virus to anyone else in its lifetime either. A win-win for sure.

–Robert C. Dickerson II, Seattle