US PEPFAR changes urged

The USA- based Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the object of several calls for change from other HIV/AIDS campaigns. In its fourth year, the PEPFAR claims to provide antiretroviral drugs to 822,000 people worldwide, although the campaign's target for five years is coverage for two million patients.

The Institute of Medicine recommended that the PEPFAR should adopt the World Health Organization's protocol for the approval of drugs to be distributed in the program, introducing better data tracking and collection, in order to target the people who are most at risk of HIV/AIDS. In an implicit criticism of President George W Bush's initiative, the IOM calls for "maintaining and/or increasing effective HIV prevention programs:" the President's program insists that a proportion of the grants are awarded to "abstinence-promoting" organizations, although the PEPFAR is not bound by US federal rules prohibiting donations to aid organizations that promote or perform abortions.