U.S. Cuts Its Own HIV/AIDS Strategy Off At The Knees

Washington, DC - May 7, 2007

Experts, activists and government officials agree on one thing: Meeting the needs of women is paramount to reducing worldwide HIV infections. Unfortunately, the U.S. response to achieving this goal has been at cross purposes. Rather than playing a starring role in reducing HIV infection in women and children, family planning programs are suffering from diminishing or a total lack of U.S. funding in almost all of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) fifteen “focus countries.” In effect, while the U.S. response to HIV/AIDS grows, its support for the very health programs where women have sought care for over four decades has lost considerable ground.

Despite the outstanding success of international family planning programs and their cost- and life-saving benefits in reducing HIV infections, U.S. funding has suffered a 41% decrease in assistance since 1995 (adjusted for inflation). Family planning, including contraceptives, reduces unintended pregnancies in HIV-positive women – preventing additional HIV-positive births. Research has shown that increasing contraceptive use among non-users who do not want to get pregnant averts almost 30% more HIV-positive births than HIV counseling, testing and nevirapine treatment alone.

In fact, the President’s FY 2008 budget requests a decrease in family planning assistance in over half of the PEPFAR focus countries (Haiti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia). Five focus countries – Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Namibia, Vietnam and Guyana – are slated to receive no family planning at all. This alarming trend hampers PEPFAR’s potential for success, effectively withholding one of the most effective tools that exists against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

PEPFAR’s purpose is to address the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and it should remain so. But when PEPFAR aims to tackle the unique vulnerabilities of women to HIV infection and the family planning needs of HIV positive women, it must do so in concert with existing, successful, and trusted family planning programs.

Stay tuned for more in-depth analysis next week on why, in addition to robust funding for HIV/AIDS programs, family planning and maternal and child health programs must be strengthened – not left to wither on the vine.

Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.