President George W. Bush stunned the world by proposing what many thought impossible: providing wide access to HIV treatment in poor countries devastated by AIDS.
Brooks Kraft / Corbis via Getty ImagesPresident George W. Bush’s reputation may have been forever complicated by 9/11 and war, but a proposal he made in his 2003 State of the Union address became a historic humanitarian success, one that resulted in 25 million lives saved from AIDS, 20 million people with HIV provided antiretroviral treatment and 5.5 million babies born to HIV-positive mothers but free of the virus themselves.
President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush greet local mothers affected by AIDS with their HIV-free children in Abuja, Nigeria, the last stop on his African tour, on July 12, 2003.In 2003, the same State of the Union address that primed the nation for the invasion of Iraq that would begin less than two months later, Bush stunned the world’s global health and political leaders by announcing what was then a $15 billion, five-year commitment to combat the international scourge of AIDS.
In the two decades since its launch, PEPFAR, long sustained by bipartisan congressional support, has provided more resources — around $100 billion — than any other nation in history toward relief efforts for a single disease. Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr is an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at Columbia University and a global leader in the fight against HIV.By the end of 2002, antiretrovirals had been provided to just 50,000 of the more than 4 million people with HIV in the region who qualified for treatment .
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