19 November 2009
U.S. PEPFAR Program Helps Millions with AIDS in Africa
Effort larger than the Marshall Plan, says PEPFAR head
Washington — A U.S. program that supports millions of HIV/AIDS sufferers in Africa through critical drug therapy has “impacted more people and taken them away from certain death than any other health program,” says Dr. Eric Goosby, U.S. global AIDS coordinator and administrator of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Speaking ahead of the December 1 World AIDS Day, Goosby told America.gov that more than 2.1 million people with the AIDS virus in a dozen African nations are now alive thanks to life-saving anti-retroviral drugs provided by the PEPFAR program.
Goosby, an infectious disease physician named by President Obama to head PEPFAR in April, said: “It is the largest response mounted by one country — all countries added up, really — against one disease in the history of mankind. It’s bigger than the Marshall Plan after World War II.”
In 1948, the U.S. government launched the four-year, $13 billion relief and development program named for then–Secretary of State George Marshall that helped Western Europe recover after six years of devastating conflict.
Since PEPFAR was established in 2003, it has provided close to $25 billion to treat AIDS victims in 31 nations. Eighty percent of the funds are devoted to sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 27 million of the world’s 33 million AIDS cases.
Goosby said the greatest challenge for PEPFAR now is to work with foreign partners to build and expand health care capacity “to ensure services are available for 25–30 years in the future.”
With that in mind, he said World AIDS Day is important because “it is an opportunity to recommit and keep our response to it [AIDS] a priority.”
Organized by the United Nations World Health Organization in 1988 and observed every December 1, World AIDS Day includes a series of musical, scholarly and civic workshops and events held around the world dedicated to spotlighting the disease, which has killed an estimated 25 million people since the early 1980s.
The day is also important, Goosby said, “to reflect on the lives lost, the potentials unrealized. The extraordinary burden that it has had on families, communities and countries will reverberate for many years.” Africa now has 11.6 million AIDS orphans, according to AVERT, an international AIDS charity.
If a main objective is keeping people alive from a disease that still has no cure, PEPFAR has been a tremendous success, Goosby stressed. “In 2003, only 50,000 people were on [life-saving] anti-retroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa,” compared to the millions that receive therapy today.
At the same time, the cost of anti-retroviral drug therapy per patient has been reduced, with the help and cooperation of drug companies, from $9,000–$12,000 a year to $400 a year, Goosby added.
On the prevention side, PEPFAR supplied more than 2.2 billion condoms worldwide from 2004 to 2008 while supporting prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission for approximately 16 million pregnancies. Altogether, in 2008, some $712 million was spent on prevention programs.
Congress in July 2008 passed a law expanding PEPFAR for five years, with funding authorized at $48 billion. Some $9 billion of that amount will go toward combating malaria and tuberculosis, diseases that when coupled with AIDS have been the scourge of sub-Saharan Africa.
For Goosby, the U.S. taxpayers’ willingness to continue funding PEPFAR “reflects the best of the American people’s desire to contribute and assume a collective responsibility to respond to such a profound unmet [medical] need.”
In essence, he said, PEPFAR’s commitment to help foreign people facing a wasting and terrible death is at “the core of the American persona,” which prides itself on neighbor helping neighbor regardless of background.
President Obama touched on that sentiment in a speech he gave in Ghana in July, where he said, “We will carry forward the fight against HIV/AIDS … because in the 21st century we are called to act by our conscience but also by our common interest.” (See “Obama’s Speech in Ghana.”)
“In recent years enormous progress has been made in parts of Africa,” Obama added. “Far more people are living productively with HIV/AIDS, and getting the drugs they need.”
At a stop in Johannesburg on a trip to Africa in August, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also touched on America’s commitment to partnering with Africans in their battle against AIDS. Accompanied by Goosby, she toured the Cullinan Clinic in Johannesburg, supported by PEPFAR and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“You know, the United States government is evidencing a bipartisan commitment to PEPFAR,” she said. “The Obama administration has said that we want to not only target HIV/AIDS, but do it efficiently, and fulfill our commitment to the amount of money that was appropriated before [under President George W. Bush] and add to it. And that’s what we intend to do.” (See “Secretary Clinton and South Africa’s Motsoaledi at PEPFAR Event.”)
