Let's define some Africa AIDS relief buzz words

One of the things we have been doing the last couple of days is just getting a feel for the system down here, figuring out who does what and how do they do it. So we thought we would take a minute to describe some of the major players in the AIDS relief effort in Africa. We are certainly not the official authority on these things, but these definitions represent our impressions after a couple of days of this stuff.

1) PEPFAR: (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). This is the name of the money that drives everything down here. It started under W. Bush as a 5-year $15 billion grant. Obama expanded the grant 5 more years and increased the commitment to $48 billion to treat AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis globally. http://www.pepfar.gov/about/index

2) USAID: This is the name of the organization of people that run several of US aid grants around the world. Win Brown, who we are staying with, is employed by USAID and works in the Southern Africa branch. It is essentially the people behind the money.
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/countries/rcsa

3) Partners: These are the NGO's (non-government organizations) that implement the AIDS relief plan. That is USAID people pay "partners" with PEPFAR money to actually do the education, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Clinical partners are the people that USAID pays to run clinics. For what it is worth, the general consensus out here seems to be that the PEPFAR dollar is the easiest money you could ever make, so if the recession is hitting you hard, move out here and give it a try. However, after seeing the weight of the AIDS problem and the incredible of numbers of people that the government pays to treat, I tend to think the government is necessary despite the inefficiency.

4) FPD (Foundations for Personal Development): The largest clinical partner in South Africa. They manage roughly 87,000 patients, 10% of the 870,000 patients treated under PEPFAR in South Africa. We went into a FPD clinic today in a township called Laudium (Loe-dee-um). Incredible experience.

5) ARV's: Anti-retroviral drugs. These are miracle pills. They seem like they literally bring people back from the dead in 5 days. They are the basic form of AIDS treatment right now. Pretty incredible stuff. They allow people who would otherwise die in months to live relatively normal lives (minus taking pills every night).Truly amazing stuff.

6) SOZO: I don't know what this stands for. It is an electronic medical records system that FPD is implementing in all their clinics. It is not EMR in to the fullest extent; there are still patient charts in paper form. It is an extremely ambitious attempt to electronically track the progress of every patient treated by FPD and the intent is for SOZO to be expanded nationally to be implemented in every PEPFAR clinic. We were trained on how to enter patient data today and will be working on that all day tomorrow.

There is no way you didn't learn something new if you read this far. Isn't that a great feeling!
We are learing so much out here and enjoying every second of it. Today was one of those days where the world just got bigger, and our view of the capabilities of public health got 92 times bigger. Awesome stuff.