U.S. AIDS program saved million African lives: study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. program launched during the Bush administration has cut AIDS deaths by 10 percent in targeted African nations compared to their neighbors and saved more than a million lives, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The study tracked AIDS deaths and HIV infections in 12 African countries getting aid under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, during the four years after it was launched in 2003 as a five-year, $15 billion effort.

The program has made a major impact in saving lives but has done little to reduce the number of people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS, the researchers found.

"It has averted deaths -- a lot of deaths -- with about a 10 percent reduction compared with neighboring African countries," Dr. Eran Bendavid of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, whose study appears in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, said in a statement.

"However, we could not see a change in prevalence rates that was associated with PEPFAR," Bendavid said.

Bendavid said the 10 percent decline translates to about 1.1 to 1.2 million deaths that have been prevented.

PEPFAR is the largest U.S. foreign aid program devoted to a single disease and has been lauded as a bright spot of former President George W. Bush's tenure. It pays for drug treatment for people infected with HIV as well as other steps such as prevention efforts.

Last July, the U.S. Congress voted to spend $48 billion to expand PEPFAR for five years to treat and prevent AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. About 33 million people are infected with HIV and 2 million die of AIDS each year, according to the World Health Organization.