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 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined the priorities of the
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR, a cornerstone
of U.S. global health assistance, which supports HIV/AIDS treatment,
testing and counseling for millions of people worldwide.
President Donald Trump's administration requested the program be cut
by $1 billion earlier this year but the Senate Appropriations
Committee voted last week to keep funding largely unchanged at
roughly $6 billion.
"The Trump Administration remains deeply committed to the global
HIV/AIDS response and to demonstrating clear outcomes and impact for
every U.S. dollar spent," Tillerson said in the report.
The administration did not disclose which programs were being cut,
but the State Department has stressed that it will continue offering
treatment to people who are already receiving it.
PEPFAR will continue to operate programs in more than 50 countries.
To maximize its impact, however, it will focus much of its efforts
on 13 countries that are nearing epidemic control - the point where
there are more deaths each year from AIDS than there are new HIV
infections.
Those countries include Kenya, Zambia, United Republic of Tanzania,
Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Lesotho, Ivory Coast, Botswana, Namibia,
Swaziland, Haiti and Rwanda.
"We've really focused on accelerating in these countries that we can
get over the finish line, together with communities and
governments," Ambassador Deborah Birx, the U.S. global AIDS
coordinator, said in a telephone interview.
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The work would be done in collaboration with the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, UNAIDS, and others.
Five of the target countries - Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia
and Zimbabwe - are already nearing control of their HIV epidemics,
based on national surveys from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Columbia University and local governmental and
non-governmental partners.
Last May, Republicans balked at the Trump administration's proposed
$5 billion budget for PEPFAR, a $1 billion cut from the current
budget of $6 billion.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week warned that even
modest cuts in HIV/AIDS funding could reverse dramatic gains in
curbing the global AIDS epidemic.
In the past five or six years, presidents have proposed PEPFAR cuts
and Congress, which controls the budget, has restored the funding,
Birx said.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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