Last week I blogged about a big announcement from the State Department outlining a new $30 million commitment to combating gender-based violence through PEPFAR. Over at State’s DipNote blog, US Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby has a bit more background on the need to address gender-based violence and how this funding will do that.
He explains:
As a key component of President Obama’s Global Health Initiative (GHI), which explicitly embraces a woman- and girl-centered approach to health issues, PEPFAR is working to reaffirm and expand its focus on women and girls in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. This $30 million initiative is one way that we are doing so.
PEPFAR’s increased GBV response will build upon the existing PEPFAR platforms in these three countries, working to increase the reach, coordination, and efficacy of GBV programs. Our hope is that this initiative will move us closer to our goal of sustainable GBV responses by moving small, pilot projects to tailored, coordinated and integrated national responses.
To ensure this, we will strengthen our current partnerships with governments, non-governmental organizations and civil society in Mozambique, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as other countries in which we work. We will also support comprehensive GBV response packages for victims of violence at health facilities, increase GBV prevention programs to address the underlying causes of violence, and improve linkages with other sectors and addressing policy and address structural barriers. PEPFAR will partner with countries and build synergies both across U.S. Government agencies and other partners that focus on GBV-related development issues, such as education, reproductive health, democracy and governance, and economic growth. As we move to expand the reach of programs to fight gender-based violence, we will strengthen our monitoring and evaluation efforts to ensure that interventions implemented are effective and contribute to the broader global effort.
Over the weekend, the New York Times printed several letters in response to last week’s articles on the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The letters provide an interesting cross-section of perspectives and responses on where America’s fight against global AIDS stands.
Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, wrote that the NY Times article “conveyed an unjustifiably negative picture of the global AIDS fight.” He wrote that, “While challenges remain, we are building on and expanding our successes, not walking away from them. This is a global responsibility, and we are using this success story to invite other governments and donors to join us in meeting it.”
A nurse who has helped treat AIDS patients in Ethiopia also wrote that she was disheartened by the article, but found encouragement “that maybe, just maybe, the urgency of the situation is now clear to the American people, and we will join forces and call on President Obama to build upon, not shift from, the success of Pepfar.”
Check out all the letters here and, if you haven’t yet, you can read a good analysis by ONE’s Josh Lozman and Erin Hohlfelder here.
U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby has taken to the DipNote blog to broadly outline the future of the Global Health Initiative as well as State’s “PEPFAR Five-Year Strategy”. It’s a pretty helpful insight into how the Administration is going about combating HIV/AIDS in the coming years:
As a result of the remarkable successes the United States Government has achieved with partner nations against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the past decade, the GHI seeks to expand existing U.S. Government commitments to broaden the impact of our activities upon broader health systems. As the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, I welcome the GHI commitment to further PEPFAR’s efforts in HIV/AIDS, and I look forward to building upon the tremendous successes PEPFAR has achieved.
Reflecting the principles of the GHI, under our new PEPFAR Five-Year Strategy, PEPFAR is transitioning from an emphasis on an emergency response to a sustainable one. To accomplish this, PEPFAR is working with partner governments to increase their ownership of, and capacity to lead, HIV/AIDS responses in country. Achieving this outcome requires a heightened effort to improve health systems at the country level. PEPFAR will deepen our work with countries to expand their capacity to deliver the health interventions they designate as priorities. As we build health systems, PEPFAR will also use these systems as a platform to directly support treatment for more than four million individuals living with HIV/AIDS, prevention of more than 12 million new infections, and care for more than 12 million individuals affected and infected by HIV/AIDS, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children.
Cultivating a sustainable response to the range of global health issues is no easy task. The Administration is dedicating unprecedented funding — totaling $63 billion over six years — towards the GHI. This figure is nothing short of remarkable: compared to the preceding six-year period from 2003-2008, this resource commitment for 2009-2014 represents more than a doubling of funds. Included in this in an increase in funding for PEPFAR, allowing us to expand the reach and maximize the impact of our HIV/AIDS programming.
This initiative represents a new and innovative way of doing business for the U.S. Government, promoting coordination among agencies and programs to avoid duplication of efforts and maximize the impact of each dollar invested. As part of GHI, PEPFAR will work closely with other United States Government programs to build the efficiency and effectiveness of national health systems, strengthening their ability to meet the variety of health needs individuals face, including HIV-related needs.
UN Dispatch picked up a great interview conducted by Science Speaks with US Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby in which he talks about the future of PEPFAR, universal access, and a host of other issues.
As you might know, December 1st is World AIDS Day. To commemorate this annual event, the World Bank will be hosting a forum in Washington, DC on “Linking HIV/AIDS, Food Security and Maternal and Child Health.”
Speakers and panelists will include US Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby, Executive Director of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria Michel Kazatchkine, and many others.
Today is the last day to RSVP, so if you’d like to attend please do so here. It promises to be a really great panel.
Global Health Magazine just posted this interesting interview with Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. In it he discusses the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) at length as well as the Obama Administration’s plans for combating the global AIDS epidemic.
Q: What are you spending most of your time on now?
Goosby: The main focus has been in understanding what we’ve done in the first five years in the PEPFAR programs (and) in each location how our response in both prevention and treatment do or do not relate to the demographics of the epidemic in each of these settings. In each city, there are multiple epidemics. Each has their own population, and movement of the virus through that population. And we’re looking at how well our prevention programs understand that movement of the virus, and if they have indeed positioned themselves in front of it.
A second focus … has been appreciating the complexity of our partnering network within the country, in the NGO community in particular. It’s been astonishing to see how well we have done in urban populations.
But now the fragility of these health systems is what I’m most concerned about it. They are as fragile as the NGO who is involved in the delivery, and that is dependent on continued resources from us to support them in that effort.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
