New Leader for PEPFAR

In the past few years, I've been following PEPFAR closely. There are plenty of people who have lauded the President's Emergence Plan For AIDS Relief as the best thing the Bush administration has done. While I agree that some money ("some" = $50 billion pledged over the next 5 years) is better than no money, the fact that there's this conscience clause preventing funding of organizations that promote contraceptive use takes us straight back to the Victorian Age. It's ridiculous to believe that everyone will remain chaste until marriage... and then there's the problem of marriage being a risk factor for women getting HIV in parts of Africa and India. Since they have little say over their sex lives with their husbands, and have even less say over who their husbands are sleeping with, these women have no power to suggest contraception use if they even know the option exists.

But I digress.

The man in charge of running PEPFAR under the Bush administration, Dr. Dybul, was asked to summarily resign by Obama and Change. I didn't (and still don't) know enough about who Dr. Dybul was to respond to this strongly. On one hand, he apparently was a an openly gay physician who has played a huge role in HIV treatment, and obviously has done some good in enrolling over 2 million people on life-prolongly ARVs around the world. On the other hand, many women's rights groups have accused him of being a proponent of hte abstinence-only clause that has almost been detrimental the purpose of PEPFAR. Regardless, Dr. Dybul's gone, and a San Franciscan may take his place--a certain Dr. Eric Goosby-- who sounds like a decent chap.

Read more about it yourself from this NYTimes article.