Earlier this year, President George W. Bush promised to spend $15 billion over five years to combat global HIV/AIDS. So far this year Congress has been willing to come up with $2.1 billion of the first installment. A budget amendment by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, that would raise that to $2.4 billion, passed the Senate last week and is now in a conference committee. The DeWine amendment deserves immediate approval. Lives are in the balance.

"I guarantee a yes vote will save thousands - hundreds of thousands - of lives," DeWine said Thursday. "We have the capacity to make a difference . . . We cannot walk away from this."

Since the president made his pledge, some in Washington have questioned whether the targeted countries have programs in place that can properly spend the money and distribute the needed medicines. Such questions have been used as excuses for cutting back the anticipated $3 billion per year.

DeWine notes the president never actually promised $3 billion per year, only a total of $15 billion, but he disagrees that the target countries cannot properly dole out the aid. He has made 15 trips abroad, visiting many of these nations, and says there are systems in place to get the help to those who need it. He recommends two strategies. Short term - get medicines to those who are infected. A pregnant woman who is HIV positive has a 30 percent chance of passing the disease on to her unborn child. With $3 worth of anti-retroviral drugs, the chance of passing on the virus can be cut to five percent. Long term - help these countries build up their medical infrastructures so they can better cope with the disease on their own. Some of the targeted nations have only 200-300 doctors in the entire country.

The United States just decided to spend $87 billion to make a difference in two countries - Iraq and Afghanistan. The HIV/AIDS funding may well keep 14 countries from sliding into chaos as disease cuts through their populations. In Botswana, one of 12 African nations designated to receive U.S. AIDS assistance, 38 percent of the population between the ages of 15 and 50 is believed to be HIV positive, DeWine said. Imagine what happens to a country when a disease wipes out whole generations.

"There will be a complete loss of hope in these countries," DeWine said. "Without hope, there will be a rise in terror. Aside from the purely humanitarian reason for wanting to prevent this, it is absolutely in our strategic interest to do so."

The $15 billion the president pledged in his State of the Union address would be enough to prevent 7 million new infections, provide AIDS-fighting drugs for another 2 million HIV-infected people and provide long-term care for another 10 million HIV-infected people and AIDS orphans.

This is help our nation has promised. The congressional conference committee considering DeWine's amendment should act quickly to keep that promise.