Bush better than Obama on Aids in Africa

• Close to 300,000 Kenyans, 197,000 Tanzanians and 175,000 Ugandans were receiving anti-viral drugs as of September 30.
• The programme helps support care for 10 million Africans who have contracted Aids.
• Aids-related death rates in Kenya have dropped by 29 per cent since 2002, while the overall Aids mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa has fallen 18 per cent since 2004.
• Over the past five years, an average of 500,000 people with Aids were added to the treatment roster each year
• By 2014, according to this new plan, about 4 million people worldwide will be receiving anti-viral drugs through Pepfar.
• The overall Aids mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa has fallen 18 per cent since 2004

Under Obama’s recently announced five-year Pepfar strategy, the average annual rate of growth would slow to 320,000.

By 2014, according to this new plan, about 4 million people worldwide will be receiving anti-viral drugs through Pepfar.

That’s roughly 1 million fewer than would have gained access to the life-extending treatments had the Bush-era growth rate been sustained.

Funding

Leaders of three dozen US medical and public health schools recently urged Obama to accelerate Pepfar and other initiatives until treatment becomes available to everyone who needs it.

The deans and presidents specifically asked Obama to fund global Aids programmes at the level projected in a Bill approved by Congress and signed by Bush.

That legislation calls for the United States to spend $48 billion over the next five years to fight tuberculosis and malaria as well as Aids.

Obama has not yet made a funding commitment for Pepfar in the coming year.

As a candidate for president, he pledged to increase Pepfar spending by $1 billion a year, but in his first budget, Obama called for only $165 million in additional funds.

The treatment trend partly reflects a decision by the Obama administration to devote more funding to diseases other than Aids that kill large numbers of Africans, especially children.

The United States intends to make diarrhoea prevention and treatment more widely available, for example.

Obama’s five-year Pepfar strategy meanwhile envisions a transfer of responsibility for the programme to local administrators in the countries where it is operating.

The White House also plans to focus on preventing transmission of the virus to babies born to women who are HIV-positive.