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According to a study published online Monday in The Annals of Internal Medicine, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the $15 billion program started by President George Bush in 2003, cut the AIDS death toll in its African target countries by more than 10 percent. The bad news is that it did not prevent new cases.
“It has averted deaths – a lot of deaths. However, we could not see a change in prevalence rates,” said Dr. Eran Bendavid, a professor of the Stanford University School of Medicine and one of the authors of the study.
Bendavid said the 10 percent decline translates to about 1.1 to 1.2 million deaths that have been prevented. However this is not enough, Bendavid said, adding that the program must also reduce the number of new people infected by at least as many as the number of people it is keeping alive.
“PEPFAR is changing the course of the AIDS epidemic,” said Peter Piot, former executive director of the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
For the study, Bendavid and colleague Dr. Jay Bhattacharya compared data from the program’s 12 “focus” countries with 29 other African nations hit hard by the disease. The 12 “focus” countries were Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
The analysis also found that the program’s cost per life saved was $2,450 during 2004 to 2007.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 33 million people are infected with HIV and 2 million die of AIDS each year
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