Funded by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Sustainable Financing Initiative for HIV/AIDS (SFI) aims to increase sustainability of the HIV response by promoting shared financial responsibility with host country governments. Since 2014, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has implemented SFI in 16 countries and two regional programs, with a budget of nearly $48 million.
Cameroon has made progress to control the HIV epidemic, but still has one of the highest rates of HIV in West and Central Africa. With an HIV prevalence of 3.4 percent in the general population, in 2020, there were about 504,000 people living with HIV (PLHIV). In that same year, nearly 14,600 people were newly infected with HIV and approximately 12,700 died from an AIDS-related illness.1 The Government of the Republic of Cameroon (GRC) is committed to eliminating user fees for HIV services and developing a new health financing strategy to ensure access to high quality healthcare services, while decreasing household expenditures on health care.
SFI is collaborating with the GRC and relevant stakeholders to eliminate user fees from HIV services and leverage untapped resources in the private sector to distribute antiretrovirals (ARVs). These efforts represent important milestones in Cameroon’s HIV response.
