Head of US AIDS mission focuses on long-term planning
The head of the United States global AIDS initiative has outlined plans to move away from short-term 'emergency' measures, to more long-term planning in the fight against the disease.
Citing the need to adapt the global fight against the disease to reflect the broad nature of the challenge at hand, Obama appointee Eric Goosby placed addressing underlying underlying health problems in African and Asian countries as the main part of his new five-year plan for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Specifically, future funding will go more towards bolstering national healthcare progammes in general, rather than those focusing just on HIV and AIDS, while money will be invested in training more localised healthcare workers.
"We've created a very good start at what was an emergency response. We now need to move that emergency response into a sustained response," Mr Goosby said in an interview with Reuters.
He also stressed, however: "We are still responding to an emergency in no uncertain terms. It is still killing millions of people."
Around three in four AIDS-related deaths currently occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
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