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Health Disparities HIV/AIDS in Africa - SECURE THE FUTURE®

Of the more than 33 million people living with HIV/AIDS around the world today, about two/thirds of them or some 22.5 million people are in sub-Saharan Africa. And while women account for slightly less than half of those infected worldwide, they represent about 60 percent of all infections in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, while 2.3 million children under 15 are living with HIV around the world, almost 90 percent of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. What's more, 2 million children under age 17 have lost one or both parents to the disease. The disparities in treatment and support for vulnerable populations in Africa are significant and must be addressed.

Since 1999, Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation have committed $150 million to develop and replicate innovative and sustainable solutions for vulnerable populations, including women and children, infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. To date, this flagship corporate philanthropy program called SECURE THE FUTURE® has provided support for over 200 projects focused on community education and outreach and medical care and research. It has also expanded its reach from 5 to 12 countries and evolved from a broad-based grantmaking initiative to focused investments in three areas: community based care in severely resource-limited settings, pediatric AIDS and the engagement of civil society in response to the AIDS pandemic. While SECURE THE FUTURE is part of a large-scale, crisis response in high HIV prevalence countries in southern Africa, the program is also working in low prevalence countries in West Africa. In that region, it focuses its efforts on the opportunity to stabilize and reverse the impact of HIV/AIDS by targeting high-risk populations -- like the milk girls of Mali and truck drivers -- with comprehensive and specialized prevention, treatment and care interventions.



Core Programs Community Based Treatment Support Program and Demonstration Project
Children's Centers of Excellence
Pediatric AIDS Corps
Providing a continuum of care for mothers and children in PMTCT programs
Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation NGO Training Institute

Community Based Treatment Support Program and Demonstration Project:

Five pilot centers serve as demonstration projects to provide and integrate medical care and community support services in countries in southern and West Africa. They are showing for the first time that comprehensive medical treatment and care, including access to antiretroviral (ARV) medicines, combined with broad-based community support, can be successful in fighting HIV/AIDS in remote, poverty-stricken areas where resources are extremely limited. These data show not only that ARVs can work even in remote, poverty stricken areas where healthcare and other resources are limited, but also that integrated social supports such as nutrition, psychosocial care, income generation and home-based care play a key role in achieving and sustaining good clinical outcomes. The care model that SECURE THE FUTURE has implemented and is evaluating with its partners moves beyond a disease-focused approach to also address social determinants of health that can limit the therapeutic benefit of HIV medicines. The projects are also conducting an independent evaluation of community services in order to truly understand and describe their value to patients and their impact on achieving and sustaining outcomes. In addition, today the program is working to further decentralize HIV treatment and care by moving such care out of HIV specialty clinics to primary and neighborhood health centers. Since then, these sites have served as models for replication in other parts of Africa, including West Africa.

 Children's Centers of Excellence:

Partnering with the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, SECURE THE FUTURE funded the first clinical center in Africa focused on children with HIV/AIDS and their families, located in Botswana. Additional Children's Clinical Centers of Excellence have been established in Lesotho and Swaziland, as well as Burkina Faso and Uganda, with another planned for Kenya. About 20 satellite clinics are also being developed.



 Pediatric AIDS Corps:

SECURE THE FUTURE and Baylor College of Medicine have created the world's first Pediatric AIDS Corps to send up to 250 doctors to Africa over the next five years to treat approximately 100,000 children and train thousands of local health care professionals.

 Providing a continuum of care for mothers and children in PMTCT programs:

These programs are focused on extending current prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) efforts in order to enhance their effectiveness. For example, new efforts are now underway to link ante-natal and obstetric care with post-natal care and care of the baby through 12 months of age, to ensure that the mother remains healthy and that transmission is indeed prevented. They also seek to ensure such a continuum of care in rural settings.

 Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation NGO Training Institute:

Operated as a virtual training institute across borders, it provides courses and certificate programs and developing training modules to build leadership, management and good governance skills among organizations working to fight HIV/AIDS.