To End a Plague ... Again

And FY2027 begins. Kind of. (For some countries, the plans aren’t done.) This post is an update and correction to yesterday’s post on the extension of the GHSC-PSM Task Order 2 contract for malaria commodities. In that post, I erroneously stated Task Order 1 for HIV, maternal, newborn and child health had not been similarly extended. It has. I am sorry for adding additional confusion to already murky conditions.

. New GHSD memo includes a rare diagnosis: We caused this. The Department of State is extending its malaria supply chain contract to avoid stock outs of lifesaving drugs and bed nets that it says would otherwise occur as a result of the Trump Administration’s overhaul of foreign assistance.

Happy Birthday, America First Global Health Strategy! Welcome to the fifth and final day of the AFGHS One-Year Anniversary Survival Toolkit, brought to you by me and MERcoon, a mermaid-raccoon, a hybrid of beauty and things that go bump in the night, just like this post’s final tool: a mash up of hope, teeth-gritted reality and inconvenient truth that is also an energy boost for the coming year. The America First Global Health Strategy has to succeed.

Welcome to Day 4 of the “AFGHS One Year Anniversary Survival Kit”—a first-ever capsule edition of the Substack for people who like to be prepared for media moments, Q&A sessions and chance encounters with its architects, implementers and followers.

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Day Three of the “AFGHS One-Year Anniversary Survival Kit,” a first-ever capsule edition of the Substack, with special guest co-host, MERcoon, the love child of a marauding, handsy creature that doesn’t respect boundaries and a mythical sea creature that will break your heart if you get too attached. Designed for people who get depleted by unsubstantiated claims and fuzzy promises, every post is a little snack of facts. A protein bar for the soul.

Welcome to Day 2 of the “AFGHS One Year Anniversary Survival Kit.” If you’re just tuning in, the first anniversary of the America First Global Health Strategy is this Friday, September 18th. This series combines news updates (tune in tomorrow for a good one!) with digestible doses of evidence about what the AF has happened with AFGHS in its first year—just in case the official comms feels light on facts or substantiation.

Welcome to The AFGHS First Anniversary Spin Cycle Survival Kit! The America First Global Health Strategy, which turns one year old on Friday, September 18th, and I’ve planned a very special1 Substack capsule edition to celebrate. I’ll be posting every day this week (a first!) and each post will include an evidence-backed take on this very special2 Strategy’s first year. Some days, the “take” will be the whole post. On days like today, it’s a section of a news update.

This Stack’s song, If You Leave, goes out to Becky Bunnell, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for PEPFAR, whose retirement from her role was recently reported by ex-GHSD’er mike Reid. When I first met Becky in 2003, she explained the details of the Home-Based AIDS Care Study in Tororo, Uganda, that sent lay workers out to rural, desperately poor households with health kits for everyone in the household, whether or not they had HIV. HBAC was utopian and of its time.

Hello and welcome to a pre-vacation Substack! It’s now or never. My local drug store is selling Halloween decor. So I’m going on a late-Northern-Hemisphere-summer hiatus for two weeks, and I’m leaving the Stack behind. Keep an eye on it, alright? Given that there’s a lot happening, and in order to increase the odds that stay offline, this is a three-in-one post.

Exactly a year ago today I hit refresh on a US government website I looked at every day. What I saw made me start this Substack. This post is a thank you for everything that’s happened since. Alt text: My very first screenshot, with some truly excellent red crayoning circling the time and date stamps on two versions of the PEPFAR Panorama Spotlight “Data Publish Calendar.” In the top one, there are dates for every sharing milestone.