HIV Prevention
Obama's approach to PEPFAR funding
Focus on providing treatment for AIDS or expand the focus of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to include other health issues plaguing developing countries? That is the question facing Barack Obama as his Global Health Initiative (GHI) program comes under attack for decreasing PEPFAR funding for ARVs and expanding the program’s HIV/AIDS focus to prevention and long term care.
It seems Obama’s GHI program seeks to expand the success of PEPFAR in order to build up health systems to provide better preventive care; however, the wisdom of this approach or the negative repercussions, if any, of this decision of people living with aids are yet to be seen. GHI places prevention of HIV/AIDS at the center of its plan for HIV/AIDS as opposed to treatment, in attempts to shift from an emergency-response posture to one of long term which some argue to be premature.
The potential pitfalls of this policy are discussed in an article in Foreign Policy magazine, which seems to suggest that if there is still an AIDS emergency; the focus of PEPFAR should remain on treatment rather than prevention. Is this necessarily the case?
The article is here:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/25/the_long_emergency?page=0,2
