Millions of HIV/AIDS patients, many of them in Africa, face an uncertain future as a financial cliff-edge for US-funded global programs fast approaches. In September, 120 funding awards for HIV/AIDS work carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control are set to expire, with no concrete replacement system in place.
The programs provide services to more than 8.7 million patients worldwide, analysts say, and it’s unclear what will happen to many patient services on the other side of October 1.
It comes as the US State Department is restructuring the CDC’s work on global health initiatives to assume greater control, according to internal guidance published by the State Department in May, of which CNN obtained a copy.
The new guidance lays out a “streamlined” approach to the United States’ long-running HIV/AIDS initiative, called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established by the Bush administration in 2003. Considered a flagship among global health initiatives, PEPFAR is credited with saving more than 26 million lives and preventing millions of infections, mostly in Africa.
Previously, PEPFAR was jointly run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), CDC and other agencies, and overseen by the State Department. But the new plan will swiftly move much more control to the State Department. Multiple critics and experts have told CNN that they support the idea of streamlining PEPFAR – work to improve its efficiency was already underway – but they believe this new approach will severely diminish the initiative’s effectiveness and sideline the health experts at CDC.
