Today's Presidential Action
President Bush announced a new $500 million International Mother
and Child HIV Prevention Initiative that seeks to prevent the
transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to infants and to improve health
care delivery in Africa and the Caribbean.
Through a combination of
improving care and drug treatment and building the healthcare delivery
capacity, this new effort is expected to reach up to one million women
annually and reduce mother to child transmission by forty percent
within five years or less in twelve African countries and the
Caribbean.
This Initiative will complement the efforts of the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and represents the next
essential step in the global struggle against AIDS.
The International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative
The Initiative focuses on treatment and care for HIV infected
pregnant women to reduce transmission of HIV/AIDS to infants.
The
Initiative is focused in two areas: (1) increasing the availability of
preventive care, including drug treatments; and (2) building healthcare
delivery systems to reach as many women as possible with the care they
need.