Fighting the Good Fight Against HIV/AIDS

A new report from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS brings us some very good news in the midst of all the doom and gloom of the economy.

The Foundation Center reports that HIV/AIDS funding proffered by developed countries to help stem the crisis in low- and middle-income nations shot up in 2008. Over $8.7 billion was dedicated to work on HIV/AIDS in 2008, up $2 billion from than 2007.

The United States represented (clocking in at $4 billion in disbursements) with the U.K., Netherlands and France pulling in right behind. If donations are measured by percentage of GDP, however, the Netherlands is the most charitable, followed by the U.K., Ireland and then the United States.

Regardless of which country opened up its purse the widest, this is some good news, especially for those in countries hit the hardest by the epidemic.

Now if the United States would turn just a little more of that concern to its own capital city, the nation's ground zero for HIV and AIDS, we'd really be getting somewhere.