February 8, 2006

Dear Senator/Representative:

On behalf of President Bush, it is my privilege to submit to you the Second Annual Report of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan), as required by Section 305 of P.L. 108-25, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003.

President Bush promised to lead the fight against global HIV/AIDS in 2003 with the launch of the Emergency Plan – $15 billion to fight the disease in over 120 countries around the world. With your support, America has followed through on this commitment, and now leads the world’s nations in its level of support for the fight.

This financial commitment is accompanied by ambitious goals, including support for prevention of 7 million new infections, support for treatment for 2 million HIV-infected people, and support for care for 10 million people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, including orphans and vulnerable children, in 15 of the world’s hardest-hit nations. To reach these goals, the Emergency Plan is implementing the most complex and diverse prevention, treatment and care strategy in the world. We are also holding ourselves to unprecedented levels of accountability for results, because President Bush made it clear that “business as usual” was not an option.

People are alive today because the United States has turned its words into action. At the time President Bush announced the Emergency Plan, only an estimated 50,000 people in all of sub-Saharan Africa were receiving life-extending antiretroviral treatment. Yet after just two years of implementation, PEPFAR supported treatment for approximately 401,000 people in the 15 focus nations (395,000 of them in the 12 sub-Saharan African focus nations), as well as approximately 70,000 additional people in other nations.

In the first two years of the initiative, approximately 3.2 million women received PEPFAR-supported services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and an estimated 47,100 infant HIV infections were prevented. The Emergency Plan also reached over 42 million people with evidence-based community outreach prevention efforts in the 15 focus countries in fiscal year 2005.

In fiscal year 2005, PEPFAR supported care for nearly 3 million people in the focus countries, including over 1.2 million orphans and vulnerable children and over 1.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS. Over the first two years of implementation, the Emergency Plan provided support for HIV counseling and testing services for over 9.4 million people in the focus countries.

The President’s strategy of partnership with our host nations is one of the keys to these unprecedented results. By working with host nations to build quality healthcare networks and increase capacity, we are laying the foundation for nations and communities to sustain their efforts against HIV/AIDS long after the initial five years.

U.S. leadership is making a tremendous difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and I believe that every American can be proud. Thank you for your efforts to support the American people’s fight against global HIV/AIDS.