Global Pulse Blog

Is funding for global HIV/AIDS programs too “vertical”?  Faced with funding shortfalls, should donor countries put the brakes on AIDS funding in favor of other  initiatives, ones that propose to address a broader range of health problems?  This proposal has drawn the anger of AIDS activists the world over, and is now the subject of passionate debate in Vienna. Back home, two medical students examine the Obama Administration’s plan to let PEPFAR funding flatline while promoting a new Maternal and Child Health (MCH) initiative.  In a commentary published in AIDS, Sarah C. Leeper (Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University) and Anand Reddi (University of Colorado School of Medicine) take on the claim one argument at a time:

The architects of the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative recommend funding the Mother and Child Campaign at the expense of future funding increases for PEPFAR. The idea that differing global health initiativesmust compete with each other lacks not only ethical legitimacy but also scientific merit. Confronting illness in isolation – whether by funding PEPFAR at the expense of programs that targetMCH or vice versa – cannot be our way forward. Policies that de-emphasize PEPFAR threaten to undermine,rather than support, MCH in countries with high HIV/AIDS prevalence [PubMed; full-text].

The strongest scientific-journal rebuttal yet to the Obama Administration’s proposal to shift resources to maternal and child health at the expense of HIV/AIDS treatment scale up comes from two medical students, who in a commentary just published in AIDS make a clear and convincing case that such a move would actually undermine the health of women and children around the globe, not improve it.

UNAIDS estimates that the cost needed to continue global HIV treatment in 2009 will be about US$9 billion.

Related reading:

• Denny CC and Emanuel EJ. “US Health Aid Beyond PEPFAR: The Mother & Child Campaign.” (JAMA,  11/2008.)
• “At Front Lines, AIDS War Is Falling Apart” (NYTimes, 05/05/2010)
• “Donor AIDS” (The Lancet Student, 05/14/2010)
• Jennifer Weinberg’s post on the Administration’s effort to address global maternal, newborn, and child health needs (GP Blog, 06/17/2010)
• “Obama ‘hurt’ by AIDS funding criticism” (The Guardian, 06/21/2010)