Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy has lauded the new US administration under President Barack Obama for continuing the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Only recently President Obama announced a US$63 billion six-year health initiative to help people in the world’s poorest countries and of that $51 billion would be spent under the PEPFAR initiative.

Ramsammy told Stabroek News that the new figure announced by Obama was one that would have already been earmarked by the previous administration.

“I am very happy that PEPFAR has continued, we should all be happy,” Ramsammy said while describing PEPFAR as one of the best “public health initiatives.”

He said recently a meeting was convened and discussions surrounded more benefits for the Caribbean region under the programme even as Guyana would also continue to benefit bilaterally from the initiative.

“We cannot simply confront individual preventable illnesses in isolation. The world is interconnected, and that demands an integrated approach to global health,” Obama said in a statement when he made the announcement.

He is expected to request the money in his budget for the 2010 fiscal year that begins on October 1.

The money will go toward efforts to fight AIDS, tropical diseases and other illnesses and to help improve maternal health.  The initiative will be aimed at addressing “some of the biggest global health challenges,” Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew had said.

The programme to combat AIDS and malaria falls under PEPFAR which would use $51B over the six-year period while the other $12 billion would be channelled to new programmes to fight tropical disease and other health problems.

PEPFAR was created by former president George Bush and Guyana has benefited tremendously from it.