U.S. Needs Domestic PEPFAR To Coordinate National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 27 Jan 2010 - 3:00 PDT

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The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provides a "clear model" for the Office of National AIDS Policy in developing the U.S.'s "first-ever national HIV/AIDS strategy," Shannon Hader, director of the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration, writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. In the U.S., there is a "business-as-usual mentality that has stymied the war on HIV," Hader says, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not reported a decline in the number of new infections for more than a decade. She adds, "Here in the district, and around the nation, the epidemic continues to rage out of control. We need a concerted, national strategy."

Hader writes, "Launched in 2003, PEPFAR set high expectations, and it has achieved them, bringing treatment to more than two million people in less than five years." She adds, "When I worked on PEPFAR in Africa, I saw the program's successes firsthand. It was more than a matter of money; PEPFAR cut through the red tape and demanded government coordination and accountability." Hader continues, "If this can be done amid political turmoil overseas, imagine its potential here."

According to Hader, in the U.S., "HIV continues to be confronted with a tangle of multiple, overlapping agencies and projects with their separate time frames, fragmented reporting and conflicting procedures." A PEPFAR-like program in U.S. "would deliver not just more money for medication, care and prevention but also a single, coordinated plan of federal government supports to local jurisdictions in pursuit of specific outcomes," according to Hader. She concludes, "In Africa and around the world, PEPFAR has saved millions of lives by providing antiretroviral treatment and coordinated prevention services where they are needed. Why should we do anything less at home?" (Hader, Washington Post, 1/24).

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