It was against this backdrop that global collaboration, cooperation and funding systems were developed. PEPFAR, or the\u00a0President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was established in 2003.<\/p>\n
Dr Grinsztejn explained that PEPFAR had been responsible for the majority of PrEP (the highly effective HIV prevention medication) access globally. But with the US funding cuts, which came into effect in January, PrEP supply had been limited to pregnant women, meaning that many population groups at risk of HIV were left without.<\/p>\n
The broad global funding model of PEPFAR had been replaced by bilateral agreements between the US and specific countries, presenting an opportunity, but with critical gaps. The new agreements, she said, focused on financing health care workers and HIV antiretroviral treatments, but concerningly, left out community-run non-governmental organisations, which under former global funding models provided the majority of HIV care, especially in countries where homosexuality was highly stigmatised and even illegal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very critical moment, and this is certainly already impacting HIV new infections and HIV related deaths, especially among children,\u201c said Dr Grinsztejn. But also, it was impacting, severely, the rollout of new prevention technology \u2013 long-acting antiretrovirals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a huge global public health risk, and it\u2019s all about safety; we need to invest because it\u2019s safe for the entire planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Priorities to meet needs now and into the future<\/p>\n
While there had been a reliance on US funding for global health, Dr Grinsztejn pointed to other funding sources, such as The Global Fund, as well as the opportunity that the new bilateral agreements presented for countries to set their own resourcing priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cCountries have the opportunity to put together their agenda where the resources could fit best to strengthen their own health systems,\u201d she said. \u201cThis affirms the principle of national ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Grinsztejn said that science and manufacturing should be among the highest priorities to enable countries to manufacture medicines locally, and that once the infrastructure was in place, this could be done much more cheaply. She drew on the example of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which those countries with the capacity to manufacture vaccines locally were ultimately able to vaccinate their populations and bring the pandemic under control much more quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was against this backdrop that global collaboration, cooperation and funding systems were developed. PEPFAR, or the\u00a0President\u2019s Emergency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,69596,1325,137,111612,111613,337,69597,129865,69598],"class_list":["post-322755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-division-of-equity-diversity-inclusion","tag-general","tag-health","tag-healthy-lives","tag-medicine-health","tag-research","tag-sdg","tag-sdg10","tag-sdg3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}