U.S. Commitment to Saving Lives in the Developing World

Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, recently wrote a great article about the U.S. commitment to PEPFAR and other U.S. Government-funded health programs around the world.

A few key points I found most interesting were:

• "...the number of people PEPFAR directly supports on ART has continued to increase dramatically each year -- in FY 2009 alone, from approximately 1.6 million to nearly 2.5 million. Without ART, very few of those people would be alive -- that's why lives saved, rather than dollars spent, is most meaningful."
• "Treatment is indispensable, but we need to do more than simply expand access to treatment to change the course of the HIV epidemic. Ending this epidemic also requires reducing the number of those who become HIV-positive. This means access to an array of evidence-based HIV prevention interventions, as well as HIV counseling and testing, and it requires improving the health systems at every level. "
• "Lives saved, diseases prevented and even eradicated, health systems and nations strengthened -- these are the goals by which global health efforts should be measured."

Please visit http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/commitment_saving_lives for the complete post.