Global Health Policy

This is a joint posting with Luke Easley

In August, CDC released updated estimates of HIV Infection in the U.S. showing that incidence for 2006 and over the previous decade was 40% higher than previously estimated. This was big news on the eve of the Mexico City AIDS Conference, but made more news on September 17th, when CDC officials "at a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing said they would need an additional $4.8 billion dollars over the next five years to reduce the annual number of new HIV infections in the U.S." The LA Times reports that:

The new numbers, published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., were found through improved testing and were not an increase in new infections, which have remained relatively constant since the late 1990s. The higher estimates, however, served as a reminder that preventing transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus is still an issue in the United States, where the prevalence of HIV is greater than in Canada, Australia, Japan or any Western European country except Switzerland.

Sound familiar? Prevention of HIV transmission was NOT the strongest component of the United States' fantastically generous PEPFAR program overseas (see my colleague David Wendt's blog) AND it doesn't seem to be doing the trick at home either. As the LA Times reports: "Young black gay men have been especially hard hit, representing 48% of new infections among gay and bisexual males ages 13 to 29. Yet only four of the CDC's 49 recommended intervention programs specifically target gay men, and only one of them is designed to address gay men of color."

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported GlaxoSmithKline's exciting new strategy to expand markets and increase access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries. Through an internal policy known as "tearing down the barriers," the company has established differential pricing schemes within and between India, South Africa and other developing countries, in hopes of shifting to a new low price, high volume business model.

In anticipation of the G8 summit and its focus on commitments to international development in Germany next week, President Bush called on Congress a short while ago to double the funding for PEPFAR from 15 to 30 billion dollars when the current plan expires in 2008. The plan for PEPFAR 2, as described in a White House press release is a "continuation and expansion" of the initial PEPFAR program:

News about India's 2007 budget (released on March 1st) heralds the fairly substantial Government of India (GOI) allocation of domestic resources towards HIV/AIDS and much of that is for prevention, to boot!