Clinton to Make ‘Positive Announcement’ on U.S. AIDS Program c.2011 Bloomberg News

Nov. 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make a “positive announcement” tomorrow related to the American government’s global plan to fight HIV and AIDS, said the chief operating officer of the program.

Clinton will “outline a vision for turning the tide on HIV/AIDS” that draws on “recent scientific advances” in remarks at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, according to the State Department website.

A study released this year that found early treatment of HIV-infected people with antiretroviral therapy reduced transmission of the virus by 96 percent has “changed the dialogue around what’s possible,” said Julia Martin, chief operating officer of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as Pepfar, when asked about the upcoming Clinton speech.

“She will talk about Pepfar’s intent and its role in continuing to build evidence, and that there really is a hope at this point,” Martin said in an interview in Ho Chi Minh City at a conference in Vietnam’s largest city on HIV. Martin declined to comment more specifically on the announcement.

A combination of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus; efforts to encourage male circumcision; the use of condoms; and the use of early treatment of antiretroviral therapy “create enough momentum that, even without a vaccine, if all deployed at a maximum coverage rate, with modeling you could actually see incidences really drop, in much more dramatic ways,” Martin said, declining to provide estimates of figures.

Largest Commitment

The program is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease internationally in history, with $32 billion from by the American government through fiscal 2010 to bilateral HIV/AIDS programs, to a global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and to bilateral tuberculosis programs, according to the Pepfar website.

While there have been no indications that Pepfar funding is endangered by the U.S. government’s fiscal deficit, the budget situation is a “major concern,” Martin said.

“We are not burying our head in the sand,” she said. “We need to be mindful of lean times, that we only support those things that are high impact, with scientific evidence to back them, that they’re done well, and they’re done for best pricing.”

--Jason Folkmanis in Ho Chi Minh City. Editors: Kristen Hallam, Bruce Rule

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jason Folkmanis in Ho Chi Minh City at folkmanisbloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafinobloomberg.net