On the eve of Independence Day in 1981, a small report in The New York Times described the first cases of what would come to be known as AIDS — a disease that would change the world. No one who read this short article could have imagined that this virus would kill 25 million people in the next 30 years.

I was born years later, in 1993. AIDS has always been a part of my life. I have lived with the fear that gripped many as the disease spread across the globe. I have never lived in a world where blood is not dangerous, where otherwise healthy young people do not suddenly die, where the African continent is not burdened with millions of orphans.

By my third birthday, though, AIDS had become a treatable disease. Education can help prevent HIV infection, simple procedures can prevent parent-to-child transmission, and antiretroviral drugs can preserve life for decades. These drugs save more than individual lives: They save teachers, preachers, and parents — they save communities.

In November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set a bold target for the United States: We would, she said, create an AIDS-free generation in my lifetime. Through male circumcision, prevention of parent-to-child transmission, and pioneering efforts to use AIDS drugs to both prevent and treat HIV, the world has the tools to create a world with no new HIV cases.

The one institution that is critical to achieving this unprecedented goal is The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world’s single largest source of funding for the war on HIV. This organization, though, is being forced to postpone any further new activities until as late as 2016 because the U.S. is unable to pay the $1.3 billion that it pledged to the Fund. For the 7.6 million HIV positive people around the world without treatment, this is a death sentence.

The U.S., quite simply, can afford to keep its promises to the Global Fund. Steven Lewis, the former UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, stated at a lecture at Yale University on Nov. 28 that the U.S. spends some $60 million more each day on the military than the pledge to the Global Fund for an entire year. In addition, in a $3.8 trillion federal budget, there are other likely places where we can find waste, fraud and abuse and re-direct those funds to saving lives.

In 1981, a new virus swept across the globe, while the world, my parents’ generation, slept. As my generation comes of age, we have the chance to end the AIDS epidemic. I want my children to be the first AIDS-free generation.

The gutting of the Global Fund will mean not only the death of millions today. It will set us up for a never-ending epidemic. If U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye and other leaders stand up and demand that the U.S. keep its promises, they can give my generation the gift of a future without AIDS. The choice is in their hands.

Daniel Dangaran, born and raised in Wahiawa and a 2011 graduate of Punahou School, is a freshman at Yale University.