{"id":161626,"date":"2023-01-26T14:39:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T14:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.one.org\/us\/pepfar-at-20-a-greater-opportunity\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T14:04:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T14:04:43","slug":"pepfar-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.one.org\/us\/stories\/pepfar-20\/","title":{"rendered":"PEPFAR at 20: ‘A Greater Opportunity’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 28, we mark an important anniversary in the fight to eradicate HIV\/AIDS \u2013 20 years since President George W. Bush announced in his State of the Union address a plan for what would soon become PEPFAR \u2013 the US President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. <\/span><\/p>\n

Allow us to set the scene: It was January 28, 2003, a chilly winter evening in Washington, DC. Nearly 22 years after the first cases of the disease that would eventually be known as AIDS were found in the United States, and 8 years after the discovery of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), a massive development in AIDS treatment. By 2003, annual HIV\/AIDS deaths in the US <\/span>had plummeted<\/span><\/a> and, in wealthy countries, a diagnosis was no longer an automatic death sentence. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, as President Bush noted in his address that night, nearly 30 million Africans \u2013 many of them children \u2013 were infected with HIV and yet only 50,000 people on the continent were being treated with those life-saving drugs. <\/span><\/p>\n

What he said next would forever alter the trajectory of the global fight to end HIV\/AIDS. <\/span><\/p>\n