The White House announced today that it will ask Congress to spend $63 billion on U.S. global health programs over six years. The money will be used to combat HIV/AIDS – largely though the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) – and on programs in malaria, tuberculosis, maternal and child health, family planning, and neglected tropical diseases.
President Obama will ask Congress for the money in his 2010 budget, which he is scheduled to release on 7 May.
In a statement announcing his plan, Obama cited the outbreak of H1N1 swine flu, and said, “The world is interconnected, and that demands an integrated approach to global health. [W]e have a responsibility to protect the health of our people, while saving lives, reducing suffering, and supporting the health and dignity of people everywhere.”
Obama’s request calls for $8.6 billion to be spent in fiscal year 2010, which begins this October. The bulk of this money – $6.7 billion – will fund PEPFAR, which was created by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
However, some global health advocates are questioning Obama’s commitment to global health, calling his $63 billion request inadequate.
“With this spending request, Obama has broken his campaign promise to provide $1 billion a year in new money for global AIDS, and he has overlooked the growing threat of tuberculosis,” said Christine Lubinski, director of the nonprofit, Arlington, Virginia-based Center for Global Health Policy, in a statement.
The center noted that Obama’s request only includes $165 million in new PEPFAR funding this year, calling this a “meager increase” that “is no match for the scope of the AIDS crisis.”
PEPFAR would receive $51 billion of the total funding Obama will request on Thursday. The program spent $15 billion on prevention, care and treatment of HIV outside the United States from 2004 through 2008, and was authorized last year to spend a further $48 billion over five years. Researchers reported last month that PEPFAR is expensive compared to other public health interventions.
PEPFAR has been controversial because it contained directives that required aid recipients to adhere to policies that have been criticized as ideologically based and unscientific. Still, many activists, doctors and scientists consider PEPFAR Bush’s greatest achievement. They hope that Obama’s nominee to head PEPFAR, Eric Goosby, will change the policies that they say have hampered PEPFAR’s effectiveness.