PEPFAR launches five-year strategy

6 February 2010. Related: Treatment access.

On 1 December 2009, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) launched a five-year strategy outlining the direction of the program for its next phase.

The goals included, to:

• transition from an emergency response to promotion of sustainable country programs;
• strengthen partner government capacity to lead the response to this epidemic and other health demands;
• expand prevention, care, and treatment in both concentrated
  and generalised epidemics;
• integrate and coordinate HIV/AIDS programs with broader global health and development programs to maximise impact on health systems; and
• invest in innovation and operations research to evaluate impact, improve service delivery and maximise outcomes.

In addition, it announced new targets for the program around prevention, care and support, treatment, and sustainability. As a component of the Global Health Initiative, PEPFAR will be carefully and purposefully integrated with other health and development programs.

COMMENT

This announcement was seen as a disappointing by many people who expected a stronger commitment to the potential role for the US in global health.

This level of funding will result in reducing the numbers of HIV positive people who will be able access the PEPFAR funded treatment programmes as new patients each year.

However, the US still donates far more to treatment programmes than other western countries, and activists outside the US also need to focus on increasing the levels of funding for treatment access by their governments.

Source: PEPFAR press release. (01 Dec 2009).

The PEPFAR strategy is published online:
http://www.PEPFAR.gov/strategy