Word: health
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Obama White House, of course, doesn't see it as a reversal. On Monday a lineup of prominent officials, including Secretary of State Clinton, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, spoke at a White House event to highlight the Administration's efforts on HIV/AIDS. In perhaps an implicit acknowledgement that this year's commitment has been less than robust, the word of the day was recommitment. On Tuesday U.S. global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby released a five-year strategy for what Obama officials call "the next phase of PEPfAR." As Clinton described...
...some critics are wondering if Bush's successor is doing enough. Many global health advocates worry that the success of PEPfAR - an initiative that has consistently enjoyed broad bipartisan support - may be jeopardized by harsh economic realities and shifting political priorities. Although Barack Obama pledged during the 2008 campaign to boost PEPfAR funding by $1 billion each year, his first budget proposed just $366 million more for fiscal year 2010 than the current year, and a majority of the 15 countries that receive PEPfAR funds will see no increase. After five straight years of funding hikes and public-health victories...
...That's a goal shared by the global health community. But officials at organizations like Doctors Without Borders warn that HIV/AIDS is still an emergency for many countries. South Africa, for example, has the world's largest population of HIV-positive individuals and yet has only recently begun to address the problem. "They were quite slow in scaling up treatments," says Emi MacLean, U.S. director of the Doctors Without Borders Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. The country's former President, Thabo Mbeki, was a skeptic about AIDS research and refused to make antiretroviral treatment (ART) widely available...
...Health advocates, including both scientists and religious leaders who have petitioned Obama to increase funding, also worry about the stability of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Global Fund, a foundation that receives funding from both public and private partners, distributes nearly a quarter of all HIV/AIDS donor money. But while PEPfAR saw a small increase in funding for the current fiscal year, the U.S. government's contribution to the Global Fund was flatlined, exacerbating an existing shortfall that threatens its work. A recent paper by Harvard researchers Rochelle Walensky and Daniel Kuritzkes warned that failure...
...organizations are told they'll have to keep people on wait lists," says MacLean. "They'll have to ration treatment in a way they haven't had to in the last six or seven years." On Clinton's Africa trip this summer, she met with Nigeria's Minister of Health, who expressed serious concern over the flatlining of funding for PEPfAR and the Global Fund. Nigeria has one of the largest PEPfAR programs in Africa, but its funding has dropped almost $10 million over the past two years, even as the number of patients needing treatment continues to grow. (Read...