Millions of HIV/AIDS patients, many of them in Africa, face an uncertain future as a financial cliff-edge for US-funded global programs fast approaches. In September, 120 funding awards for HIV/AIDS work carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control are set to expire, with no concrete replacement system in place.

Impact on Patients

The programs provide services to more than 8.7 million patients worldwide, analysts say, and it’s unclear what will happen to many patient services on the other side of October 1. The awards fund a range of services including community testing, HIV clinical services, HIV lab services, Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) medication and more.

Mozambique, Tanzania, and South Africa will be hit particularly hard by the funding cliff this year, the analysis shows. The impacts are expected to vary greatly from country to country.

Restructuring of PEPFAR

The US State Department is restructuring the CDC’s work on global health initiatives to assume greater control. The new guidance lays out a “streamlined” approach to the United States’ long-running HIV/AIDS initiative, called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established by the Bush administration in 2003.

Multiple critics and experts have told CNN that they support the idea of streamlining PEPFAR – work to improve its efficiency was already underway – but they believe this new approach will severely diminish the initiative’s effectiveness and sideline the health experts at CDC.

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.