U.S. GOVT TO DOUBLE PEPFAR INITIATIVE TO $30b

Abuja, Nigeria--The United States of America has announced its plans to double the amount ear-marked for implementing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program, from $15b to $30b for the next phase 2009 -2014. This pronouncement was made yesterday by Ambassador Robert Gribbin, Charge D’Affaires, United States Embassy, Nigeria, at the star studded opening banquet of the 3rd Harvard PEPFAR Tri-country conference taking place in Abuja, Nigeria. To this end, the administration of President George Bush, is seeking to reauthorize the PEPFAR bill at the United States Congress the bill backing the PEPFAR initiative
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In his speech, Amb. Gribbin extolled the importance of Nigeria in the global arena; being a principal actor in ensuring peace in the troubled spots of Dafur, Sudan and the West African block and also a force within the petroleum producing nations in the world. To this end, he said there was the need to ensure that people living with the HIV/AIDS in Nigeria are also helped in everyway possible.

Commenting that the opening ceremony coincided with the remembrance of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre (9/11) six years ago, Amb. Gribbin said ‘While the victims of the 9/11 terror attack cannot be brought back to us, we intend to make sure that the people who without the help of good treatment, care and support, would have become victims of HIV/AIDS epidemic would be brought back to the productive and qualitative life they had always known.’

He commended the Harvard PEPFAR team of medical researchers for the level of work they had done since the inception of the initiative in Nigeria and urged that the conference should be an opportunity for them to share experiences on the work done in the area of on promoting AIDS awareness, second-generation HIV and STD surveillance, intervention in high-risk populations, prevention of mother to child transmission, and the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS in their countries and to learn from this experiences to fashion out a best practice that can be adopted to suit the individual country.

This Tri-country conference from September 11 to 15, 2007 is the third in the series with partners from Botswana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and the Harvard University teams based in Boston and Chicago, United States. The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), in partnership with governmental and non-governmental agencies and universities, initiated the APIN program in 2001. Since then, the APIN-Harvard Nigeria program has supported over 30 projects in Lagos, Oyo, Plateau, and Borno States. These projects focused on promoting AIDS awareness, second-generation HIV and STD surveillance, intervention in high-risk populations, prevention of mother to child transmission, and the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.

The Harvard-PEPFAR conference promises to cover all of these issues in great detail as delegates from around the world gather to discuss, debate, and share their current projects and visions for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

*Reported by Nnenna Ike