There are many who consider the most significant positive legacy of George W. Bush’s eight years as President of the US to be his implementation of PEPFAR: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Developed in 2003, the initiative designated $15 billion dollars to be spent on AIDS relief efforts. $9 billion of this was allocated to 15 focus countries that are most harshly affected by the disease, 12 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. The goals of the effort were lofty:
- Provide treatment to 2 million people with HIV infection
- Prevent 7 million new HIV cases
- Provide care to a further 10 million people affected by AIDS
Reporting directly to the Secretary of State, OGAC (the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator) managed the implementation and realization of the initial “2-7-10 by 2008” goal.
In November of 2008, President Bush announced that both the treatment and the care goals had been met. Yet prevention of a disease is much harder to gauge because it is difficult to measure a non-event. For example, the distribution of one condom could be counted as one case of AIDS prevented, when no foreign aid worker can truly know whether or not that condom was used.
PEPFAR has certainly done a lot of good on the African continent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where AIDS relief is so needed. Yet Bush’s program was not without stipulations, many of which clashed with traditional African social norms. Many think that even though PEPFAR has done great things, more significant results could have been achieved. In my next posts, I will go into more detail about how the PEPFAR funds were divided and allocated.