FHI Receives $162 million to Continue International AIDS Efforts -- April 3, 2002

WASHINGTON (April 3, 2002) — The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced today it has awarded Family Health International (FHI) and its partners $161.9 million over the next five years to permit USAID missions to expand and scale-up HIV/AIDS prevention, care and mitigation programs.

At a time when HIV/AIDS continues to ravage many developing countries, this extension (from Oct. 1, 2002, to Sept. 30, 2007) allows FHI's Implementing AIDS Prevention and Care (IMPACT) Project to continue its work in developing nations without disruption.

"This is significant because of the continuity it brings to these programs," said Peter R. Lamptey, MD, DrPH, president of FHI's AIDS Institute. "It allows 10 years of prevention and care interventions to continue uninterrupted and gives us greater freedom to work with implementing agencies to improve their capacity to respond to the world's hardest-hit areas."

"As we step up our war on AIDS, we are pleased to continue our partnership with Family Health International," said Anne Peterson, MD, MPH, who runs USAID's Bureau for Global Health. "By working together, we can and will turn this pandemic around." USAID is the world's leader in providing funding to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Since 1986, it has provided $2.2 billion for prevention, care and treatment programs in over 50 countries around the world.

The IMPACT team — with experts in public health, program management, communication, social sciences, economics, evaluation, epidemiology and infectious disease control — uses proven intervention strategies to:

• Reduce risk and vulnerability to HIV
• Strengthen HIV/AIDS care, treatment and support
• Support public- and private-sector efforts to develop sustainable responses to HIV/AIDS
• Improve the availability and use of data for HIV-related decision making.

These strategies drive an expanded and comprehensive response to the AIDS pandemic designed to give all sectors of society the knowledge, skills and support needed to prevent HIV transmission; to care for and treat those who are already infected; and provide support for those affected by the virus. IMPACT addresses sexual and non-sexual HIV transmission, including mother-to-child transmission. IMPACT also emphasizes the need to intervene at multiple levels to make social norms, health services and political and economic environments more supportive of individual behavior change and to reduce vulnerability to HIV. IMPACT focused initially on prevention; because of the nature of the epidemic, IMPACT now focuses greater attention on treatment, care and support programs.

The IMPACT extension builds on FHI's 15 years of global leadership in HIV/AIDS prevention and care. A non-governmental organization with a worldwide reputation for research, education and service delivery in reproductive health, FHI was one of the first U.S. NGOs to initiate HIV/AIDS programs in Africa, beginning in 1986. From 1987 to 1997, FHI managed the USAID-supported AIDSTECH and AIDSCAP projects. The first five-year IMPACT project, supported with $148 million from USAID, began in 1997 and ends September 30, 2002.

With a staff of 360 throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, the FHI AIDS Institute is ideally suited to identify what is needed in a particular country, provide state-of-the-art interventions, tailor programs to local needs, and advocate for compassionate, realistic, appropriately resourced responses. FHI's IMPACT partners are: the Institute for Tropical Medicine; Management Sciences for Health; Population Services International; Program for Appropriate Technology in Health; and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

FHI has more than 30 years of experience developing and managing complex, multi-country programs in family planning research, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV/AIDS prevention and care, adolescent and maternal health, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic information dissemination. With corporate headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC, FHI operates management centers in Washington, DC, Bangkok and Nairobi, and implements programs through offices in more than 40 countries, closely collaborating with national ministries of health, community-based organizations, NGOs and various other agencies.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is the U.S. government agency that provides development and humanitarian assistance worldwide.