Interview - Ambassador John N. Nkengasong discusses the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa, the importance of establishing strong public -private partnerships for sustainability of the response, government ownership and leadership in the HIV/AIDS response.
MODERATOR: Good afternoon to everyone joining us from across the continent. We are hosting today the U.S. Department of State's Global AIDS Coordinator and Senior Bureau Official for Global Health Security and Diplomacy, Ambassador John N. Nkengasong.
I think overall over the last 21 years, PEPFAR has invested over $110 billion, and in Botswana it has invested in our partnership with the Government of Botswana over $1 billion, and that has been part of the success story that I just described for you in Botswana. AMBASSADOR NKENGASONG: Absolutely, that's a very good question, Fumbe, because we have to be thinking ahead. HIV unfortunately is a very clever virus. It's a retrovirus, which means that it will take a considerable amount of efforts, if we are fortunate to have a vaccine and cure, to be able to say that we eradicated HIV or eliminated HIV, just like we did for polio – what we are doing for polio or smallpox.
So let me just share some numbers, which I stated earlier. Just last year alone in this – in Botswana, the country recorded 4,200 new cases of infections, and many amongst young people. I don't think we – in this country, we recorded 4,000 cases of mpox or any other emerging disease. So the HIV is still there.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Ambassador. So we have a live question from Carmen Paun of Politico. I'm going to invite Carmen to ask her question live. So I think my top priority is to work with everyone, mainly Congress, to get a clean five-year reauthorization. That way we – it can enable us to have a sustained conversation with the partner countries and say, look, let's approach our journey to 2030 in the spirit of joint responsibility and joint accountability. We put – the U.S. Government is not transactional in the fight against HIV. We have not – we are a committed and proud partner.
A lot of the COVID successes that we saw in Africa were on the backbone of work that PEPFAR had established. So we are very proud partners in strengthening health systems on the continent. We would never have achieved the goals of saving 25 million lives, preventing 5.5 million children born free of HIV without very strong systems, capacity development on the continent. It is one of those programs that the knowledge that it will be the rising tides raising all boats in the sea.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. So we have a question also from Kenya, from John Muchangi, who writes for . And the question is: "What is PEPFAR's plan in promoting access to long-acting injectable ART and the new injectable" – I might be mangling some of these terms –"PrEP lenacapavir in Africa?" I apologize if I got those terms wrong.
So again, it shows you the power of science and innovation as we fight HIV/AIDS. Who knows, in the coming years we might actually be – if we are fortunate by science, continuous investment in science, we may have long-acting PrEP that are administered only once a year. So again, we are very excited with the new developments with the lenacapavir, six-monthly injectable, but we still have some work to do in order to make the price truly affordable. Yeah.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Ambassador. So I know our time with you is running short, and I think we might have time for just one more question. So I have a question here: "You were once an Africa CDC director during COVID. What is your experience with African health systems, governments, and the pandemic response?"
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