Sens. Hatch, Smith Endorse PSI's AIDS Work

WASHINGTON, DC, May 5, 2005 — PSI is contributing effectively and cost-efficiently to preventing HIV infection in dozens of countries throughout the developing world, according to a letter from Senators Orrin G. Hatch and Gordon Smith to Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Their letter was responding to "inaccurate information" that has circulated recently about PSI's long-standing balanced approach to HIV/AIDS. PSI promotes a variety of proven health strategies in HIV/AIDS, family planning, malaria, safe water and nutrition. Although more known for products such as condoms, oral rehydration salts and insecticide-treated mosquito nets, PSI has long promoted services — such as voluntary HIV counseling and testing — as well as other types of healthy behavior such as abstinence and mutual fidelity, starting in PSI's very first HIV/AIDS prevention project in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1988.

"Those [PSI] programs include a mixture of prevention activities, and focus on the ABC prevention approach," the senators write. "In 2004 alone, PSI programs averted, by PSI's measurement system developed by outside health specialists, over 800,000 cases of HIV… PSI's work is important in helping the President's AIDS program meet its objectives and goals, and we wish, once again, to articulate our support for this work and the President's far-sighted policies on this very important issue."

Sen. Hatch, the senior senator from Utah, was elected to the Senate in 1976 with no previous political experience. In 1990, Sen. Hatch and Sen. Edward Kennedy championed the Ryan White AIDS Care legislation, which provided new government funding to care for children and adults living with AIDS. Sen. Hatch has continually fought an expanding federal bureaucracy. As the most senior Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Hatch is a leader in the fight for tougher laws, civil justice reform to unclog the courts and legislation to protect individual property rights. He is also the second ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, where he has been a leading advocate for policies encouraging savings and investment and other pro-growth tax bills.

Sen. Smith, elected to the Senate in 1996, has quickly earned a reputation as a statesman with an independent streak. He is chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and serves on four major committees: Commerce, Science and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Indian Affairs; and Finance. He has become known for his ability to cross party lines in the interests of his constituents. Sen. Smith has been selected four times to be a deputy whip, a position that he currently holds.

— David J. Olson, PSI/Washington

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