Dr. Fauci and Colleagues Await AIDS Relief Reauthorization by Congress

The United States Congress is considering the reauthorization of PEPFAR. The death sentence of AIDS has been significantly decreased across the world in the last 20 years, since The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was spear-headed by President Geroge W. Bush, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others. In that time, 25 million deaths have been avoided, while 5.5 million babies born to HIV-positive mothers lived their childhood HIV-free. PEPFAR, designed by Bush to avoid paternalism, offers 55 low-and middle-income countries struggling with the HIV/AIDS crisis a partnership with tools for sustainability. PEPFAR also offers hope.

Continuing PEPFAR will ensure millions of people access to prevention, care, and treatment for HIV/AIDS. Concerns of anti-abortion advocates have stymied the reauthorization process by Congress. PEPFAR has long held that they do not subsidize abortion. Members of Congress are being asked to decide between the moral imperative of saving lives through successful foreign-aid healthcare programs supported by PEPFAR, and the convictions of those who advocate against abortion. Members of Congress are working with the specter of a government shutdown looming. Wrangling the reauthorization of PEPFAR is a test of courage and humanity.

The experience of scientists and clinicians engaged in the early battle against the life-threatening HIV/AIDS crisis provides crucial perspective. Leslie Diaz, M.D., is a respected infectious disease specialist in Florida. She trained at the University of Florida in infectious diseases in the mid-nineties, in the decade after HIV was shown to be the cause of deadly acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Dr. Diaz has committed her career to preventing and treating HIV/AIDS. I caught up with her recently and asked about game changers for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

“I finished my fellowship in 1996,” Dr. Diaz told me. “By that time, we had already developed our first protease inhibitor, which came out in December 1995.” She will never forget it. The following year a second protease inhibitor to treat HIV became available. Those two medications turned around the numbers of not only new HIV cases and dramatically lowered the death rates. But the new medications were not available to most people across the world. Besides the cost, some experts did not believe the logistics of getting medication to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS would allow effective management of the crisis in the most desperate and impoverished countries, especially in parts of Africa.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davecampbell/2023/09/18/dr-fauci-and-colleagues-await-aids-relief-reauthorization-by-congress/?sh=630993ee7109