Budget Deal Reached on Global Health Programs and Needle Exchange Ban

Lawmakers have finalized the fiscal year 2010 budget for foreign assistance, setting funding for key programs to fight global HIV and TB and reaching a landmark deal to revise the needle-exchange ban.
The agreement—expected to pass the House before the end of this week and the Senate before the end of next week—includes some modest increases [...]

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WHO Report: Progress Made in Treating TB, But Key Challenges Remain

An estimated 8 million tuberculosis-related deaths have been averted over the last 15 years through aggressive global efforts to combat this ancient and deadly epidemic, according to a new report released today by the World Health Organization.
 The epidemiological report, which provides more up-to-date figures than usual, says there were an estimated 9.4 million new cases [...]

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HIV/AIDS Experts Call For Bold Treatment and Prevention Targets to Combat Global AIDS

As World AIDS Day approaches, leading physician‐scientists called on the White House and Congress to continue the scale‐up of HIV prevention and treatment services in the developing world and to preserve U.S. leadership in the battle against this deadly epidemic.
The Obama Administration is expected to release its five‐year global AIDS strategy on Dec. 1—World AIDS [...]

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PEPFAR Has “Mandate Without Money,” Haitians Have ARVs without Water, Food, Shelter

A delegation of HIV-positive Haitains recently visited Washington to lobby for robust funding for PEPFAR. Read their compelling stories in this blog, which details how HIV-positive patients have access to HIV drugs but not necessarilly to a glass of water to wash the pills down or food to make the medicines tolerable and effective.

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Needle Exchange Programs Curb the Spread of HIV/AIDS Across the Globe

In case lawmakers need an extra nudge as they consider lifting the ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs, here are two fresh facts on the effectiveness of this tool in reducing the spread of HIV:
*In India, needle exchange programs have contributed to a dramatic reduction in HIV seroprevalence among injection drug users—cutting the [...]

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Goosby Talks to VOA about Impact of Economic Downturn on Global AIDS Programs

ScienceSpeaks readers will not want to miss this Voice of America interview with Dr. Eric Goosby, the US global AIDS coordinator, who addresses, among other issues, the Administration’s commitment to PEPFAR amid the economic downturn. This Goosby interview comes as the International AIDS Society released this statement warning world leaders not to mistake progress in HIV treatment scale-up [...]

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Where Will PEPFAR Find 140,000 New Health Care Workers?

It seems there are still more questions than answers about how PEPFAR will achieve a key milestone—recruiting and retaining 140,000 new health care workers over the next five years in countries hard hit by the AIDS epidemic.
Congress included that provision when lawmakers reauthorized PEPFAR last year, part of a broader effort to strengthen developing countries’ [...]

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A Timely Reminder of Fauci’s Call for a Transformative TB Research Agenda

What will come of Anthony Fauci’s call for a “transformative” research agenda for tuberculosis, in which doctors and scientists get new resources and support in the search for better drugs and diagnostics to combat this ancient scourge?
Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered that appeal for a more aggressive approach to [...]

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UNAIDS Country Director Speaks about South Africa and its HIV Epidemic

This post is by Center Director Christine Lubinski.
Dr. Catherine Sozi, the UNAIDS Country Director for South Africa, spoke to HIV advocates and PEPFAR implementers during a trip to Washington this week that included stops on Capitol Hill and at the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, where she conveyed a message about South Africa’s explosive [...]

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Emanuel Offers Some Details of Administration’s Global Health Initiative

This post is by Center Director Christine Lubinski, who attended today’s meeting at the NIH of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
 The Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative has been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny since the White House first unveiled the proposal, with few details, in May.
Today, at a meeting of leading [...]

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