PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief, is a roughly $7 billion annual program launched in 2003 by the George W. Bush administration to tackle the global HIV epidemic. It is one of the largest and most effective global health programs in history. It is estimated to have saved 25 million lives so far through HIV and AIDS treatment and prevention, and some 20 million people alive today depend on medication from the program.
And now its future is at risk. Rather than meeting a September deadline to reauthorize PEPFAR, House Republicans and Democrats have been in continuing disputes about the program’s funding of organizations that also provide abortion and abortion-related services. The standstill has already lasted several months and has continued into the new year.
That might not seem surprising. Congress was deadlocked throughout much of its most recent session, unable to come to an agreement on an assortment of priorities. And PEPFAR has been subject to criticism in the past — various aspects of the program, such as its support for sexual abstinence programs, its past restrictions on using generic drugs, and the question of funding organizations that didn’t denounce prostitution, have been the focus of debate and legal conflict. But the program has always evolved in the face of criticism and has always been reauthorized with strong bipartisan support every five years — until now.
This standoff risks both the short- and long-term future of the program. The Washington Post reported in October that at least $1 billion in PEPFAR funding for 2024 hadn’t been released because of delays caused by Republicans. But whatʼs even more concerning is that House Republicans have demanded the program move to an annual authorization schedule, which would allow a potential future Republican president to change the details more substantively, and set up even more bruising reauthorization battles.
Without five-year reauthorizations, it’s…
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