Further details have emerged on the programmes that will be supported to deliver antiretrovirals by the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, announced yesterday by US Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias.
In addition to a consortium headed by Catholic Relief Services, US treatment and care funds will also go to a number of institutions that already have extensive experience of delivering care in Africa. The organisations have been funded to run five-year programmes that will treat up to 400,000 patients at a cost of US$683 million.
Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Treatment Care and Prevention Initiative in Africa aims to treat 75,000 people in Nigeria, Botswana and Tanzania over the next five years.
In the first year of this new initiative, Professor Phyllis Kanki and her team, including Richard Marlink and Wafaie Fawzi of HSPH, hope to start treatment for 8,000 people in Nigeria, 4,000 in Botswana and 3,000 in Tanzania.
In Botswana and Nigeria the grant will expand existing clinic capacity, allowing more people to receive antiretroviral treatment. Tanzania will continue to focus on identifying HIV in pregnant women and TB patients, but will begin to identify individuals eligible for treatment immediately.
Prof. Phyllis Kanki will use generic antiretrovirals in Nigeria and Tanzania. She told the Boston Globe: "It's my understanding that we could use generics," she said. "We would like to go with what the country is going to go with."
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University – home of the MTCT Plus programme to prevent mother-to-child transmission – has been awarded funds to scale up programmes to treat mothers and children, as has the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.