Trump’s call to wipe out AIDS should unite all

The president called on Congress and the nation to unite behind a bold new initiative of his Department of Health and Human Services. That action plan challenges this country to completely wipe out all HIV and AIDS infections by the year 2030.

Knee-jerk reactors may cynically ask whether this is little more than pie-in-the-sky grandstanding from a president known to thrive on hyperbole. But no, Virginia, this initiative was not a product of a chief executive in search of a pleasantly populist sound bite in the nationally televised address . ...

Its goal is to reduce new HIV infection rates by 75 percent within five years and by 90 percent within 10 years toward complete eradication of the disease that has claimed more than 700,000 American lives . ...

We also hope the president matches the magnitude of the

HIV-elimination proposal with generous funding to support it in the 2020 fiscal year budget he will propose to Congress next month. Already, some skeptics point to a trend of decreasing financial support for AIDS initiatives from the federal government over the past two years as cause for concern over the viability of this new “Plan for America” mission.

Above all else, annihilation of the HIV virus in this country should be a mission that unites all of us, regardless of our political stripes.

Read the full editorial from the Youngstown Vindicator at bit.ly/2E5DD7O