AIDS was the reason I moved to the West African country of Ivory Coast in 1993, at the height of its HIV epidemic. In my 35-year career as a public health doctor and epidemiologist, I have witnessed a remarkable arc from a time when AIDS was a death sentence to the present, when people living with HIV can expect a normal life span, and the number of new HIV infections and deaths in most African countries has declined dramatically. This trajectory was made possible in large part by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, spearheaded by former President George W. Bush in 2003.
The hardest aspect of my family’s six-year sojourn in Ivory Coast was witnessing the agonizing demise of patients and colleagues dying of AIDS. I recall all too well walking the hallways of hospitals in Abidjan that were lined with skeletal figures on stretchers, waiting to die. Yet within a few years, PEPFAR transformed such tragic scenes replaying in many African countries. When we moved to Tanzania in 2005, AIDS was no longer a death sentence thanks to the lifesaving HIV medications provided by PEPFAR and other initiatives like the Global Fund.
In the two decades since it was launched, PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives that would otherwise have been lost to AIDS, and it has generated goodwill toward the U.S. around the world. Until this year, the program was reauthorized every five years whether Republicans or Democrats held a majority in Congress.
U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., and...
You are reading the second issue of the Disinformation Monitor. It is published on a monthly basis and provides an overview of developments on the disinformation scenes on NATO’s eastern frontier....