Concern for the over 40 million people infected with HIV and others at risk of infection or otherwise affected through the impact on their families and communities moved the US Congress on behalf of the American people to pass in May 2003 an unprecedented $15 billion international public health initiative--the US Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act.
Congress mandated that the Institute of Medicine review the groundbreaking initiative created by the legislation--the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR seeks to prevent seven million HIV infections, provide two million HIV-infected people with antiretroviral therapy, and care for ten million people affected by HIV/AIDS. These people live in fifteen different "focus countries", most with limited health care system capacity for scale-up of HIV/AIDS-related services.
The Committee on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Implementation Evaluation released its first report, a letter report titled Plan for a Short-Term Evaluation of PEPFAR Implementation: Letter Report #1.
This letter report outlines the committee's plan for responding to the Congressional mandate to evaluate PEPFAR's progress at the 3-year mark and in time to inform reauthorization discussions. The report outlines the evaluation questions and the approach to answering them.
Beginning in November 2005 and continuing through February, the IOM Committee will be visiting the PEPFAR Focus Countries in small delegations to examine PEPFAR implementation on the ground. Zambia will be the first country visited. Other PEPFAR Focus Countries are Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Vietnam.