Congressional Changes to 2008 PEPFAR Bills

Both the House and Senate made important improvements on the 2003 PEPFAR bill by:

• Requiring the United States to create a strategy that addresses non-health factors that put girls and women at risk of contracting HIV,
• Providing free drugs for opportunistic infection, and
• Emphasizing the need to training new healthcare workers.
• Directing funding specifically to the needs of AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children 

Nevertheless, the new bills fail to integrate some of the lessons learned from five years of implementation and support effective, evidence-based, and medically-accurate HIV prevention programs. Given that six people are infected with HIV for every person who is put on treatment; more effective prevention efforts are needed now.