PEPFAR AND MIKE DYBUL!

Today was a normal day of school....UNTIL 5PM when Ambassador Mark Dybul came to our school to talk with us. He initiated PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) During Bush's administration. PEPFAR is the biggest financial commitment to combatting HIV/AIDS the US has ever made...and Mark Dybul started it! As I said in my last post, we were in 4 groups and had to write an executive summary/proposal for how to reallocate PEPFAR funds, my group had Botswana, the country with the most HIV/AIDS cases in the world. We presented these proposals to him, and it was really cool. He really questioned us and made us realize that alot of the parts in our proposals couldn't work, and those were things he had to think about to craft policies. Our group said to give Botswana money to build more clinics and hospitals and train more doctors there...He said they have a ton of clinics, more than pretty much every country. That would not treat the problem either. Those were things we thought about, but overlooked. I agreed with him though, and brought up those points a few times yesterday. I had a pretty long on-going conversation with him during our group's time. What surprised me was that I knew enough about Botswana and the situation there to have a good conversation about it. I'm really happy I learned so much in just a couple of days. Meeting with him was AWESOME!