Pick up the phone. Make the call.

Sometimes I do some digging around to find stories to post, other times the stories come to me. This one was in my inbox this morning:

HIV/AIDS is a global emergency. In developing countries, where effective antiretroviral drug treatments are financially out of reach, it can kill with alarming speed. Around the world, there were 2.1 million deaths from AIDS related complications in 2007. The suffering is compounded by malaria, which causes a child in Africa to die every 30 seconds from a mosquito bite, and tuberculosis, which preys on those already weakened by AIDS.

An emergency this serious requires an all-out response. Since 2004, ours has been PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. PEPFAR is saving lives and a vote to re-authorize for another five years it is about to happen in the House of Representatives.

The email was from a wonderful organization called One.org. Through this organization, "we" can stand as "one" to end poverty, hunger, and disease in the world. As Americans we bitch and moan about the price of gas and the mortgage crisis, and we forget how really lucky we are to live where we do. I think we have an obligation to the citizens of the planet who didn't happen to be born into our prosperous circumstances.

Okay, enough preachiness. Just contact your Representative and tell them to re-authorize PEPFAR. You can find out more about the re-authorization of PEPFAR here. PEPFAR works:

In 2004, only 400,000 people were receiving life-saving antiretroviral drug treatment around the world. By September 2007, 1.45 million patients, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, were getting the medicine they needed through PEPFAR-supported programs.

Americans agree: We have a moral obligation to help

Last month, The ONE Campaign enlisted the help of Peter D. Hart Research Associates and McLaughlin and Associates to conduct a bipartisan survey of likely Democratic and Republican New Hampshire primary voters. ONE will release the full results this afternoon, but as an exclusive to our ONE Blog readers, some key findings are below.

• Nearly all Democrats (97%) and 70% of Republicans agree that America's standing has suffered in recent years. In addition to a strong military, Democrats (91%) and Republicans (78%) agree that the United States also needs to improve diplomatic relations by doing more to help improve health, education and opportunities in the poorest countries around the world. Both Democrats (81%) and Republicans alike (70%) agree that reducing poverty, treating preventable diseases and improving education in poor countries around the world will help make the world safer and the United States more secure.


• Democrats and Republicans agree that America has a moral obligation as a compassionate nation to help the world's poorest people through foreign assistance. More than nine in ten Democrats (93%) and 84% of Republicans agree that when millions of children around the world are dying from preventable diseases and hunger, we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help. Similarly, Democrats (90%) and Republicans (85%) agree that it is in keeping with the country's values and our history of compassion to lead an effort to solve some of the most serious problems facing the world's poorest people.


• When it comes to addressing these issues, Democrats (86%) and Republicans (67%) agree that it is important for Presidential candidates to discuss their plans for addressing global hunger and poverty issues in this campaign. Additionally, eight in ten Democrats (81%) and Republicans (80%) agree that the next president should keep the commitments made by President Bush to prevent and fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.