AIDS Relief Program Falls Behind Schedule

Delays in the importation of AIDS drugs may cause a Harvard AIDS relief program to miss its first-year targets, according to numbers provided by the interim executive director of the program.

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), one of four institutions administering the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), won a five-year $107 million grant in February for relief work in Botswana, Nigeria and Tanzania.

But the program has fallen behind schedule because Tanzania has yet to purchase the anti-retroviral drugs needed in the HIV/AIDS clinics that Harvard is assisting.

After six months, the program oversees hundreds of patients, but had hoped to enroll 3,000 before the end of its first year, said Mark Barnes, interim executive director of Harvard PEPFAR.

In Nigeria, the program is funding treatment for approximately 2,000 patients; its one year target was between 7,000 and 9,000 patients.

Barnes, who is currently in Tanzania, explained that the program supervises treatment for more HIV/AIDS patients than any other program in Nigeria, and that Harvard PEPFAR’s figures aren’t lower than any of the other relief programs receiving government funding.

However, a Boston Herald article yesterday cited an anonymous source saying that University President Lawrence H. Summers was “apoplectic” about the progress of the program and its shortfalls.

Lucie McNeil, Summers’ spokeswoman, denied that the president is

upset.

Barnes also disputed the Herald article.

“I think it’s inaccurate in both spirit and letter,” he said.

The Boston Herald reporter who wrote the article, John Strahinich, declined to comment further about the article, saying that his article spoke for itself.

Even though the numbers are not on track to be as high as the program’s first-year goals, the program has not received any criticism from Harvard or the U.S. government, according to Barnes.

Barnes said that Summers had previously expressed personal encouragement to him and dismissed any possibility of a scandal.

“We’ve got nothing to hide and everything to be proud of,” Barnes added.

Barnes said that a preliminary version of the federal budget included a substantial increase for the program.

The shortfall in some of the numbers arises from the careful planning and coordination of the program’s activities according to Robin Herman, HSPH spokeswoman. She said there were time-consuming negotiations on logistics among HSPH, the U.S. government and the three other grant recipients—Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Catholic Relief Services and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation—before the program could operate at full capacity.

Barnes said that, unlike previous AIDS relief organizations with multi-year implementations plans, the PEPFAR program was put on the ground within months of the grant announcement.

Barnes said that in Botswana, where 40 percent of all adults are HIV-positive and where all the AIDS clinics are government-run, Harvard PEPFAR is funding only administrative aspects of the clinics, such as data management services and the monitoring of operations.

In Nigeria and Tanzania, Harvard PEPFAR pays the costs of medication and also the labor costs for medical professionals in certain clinics.

Sarika P. Bansal ’06, who is president of the Harvard AIDS Coalition, did not specifically fault the Harvard program. But she criticized PEPFAR as a whole, pointing to its limited scope and lack of communication between donors and recipients. She also criticized the U.S. policy that denies funding for organizations that provide abortion counseling.

“In some ways it is a bit deceptive because they don’t go after the brunt of the disease burden,” Bansal said. Bansal also noted skyrocketing AIDS rates in countries that PEPFAR does not work in such as China, Russia and India.