Hannah Johnson, Program Manager of Global Policy at the George W. Bush Institute, was invited to participate in the White House Cervical Cancer Forum on Jan. 25. Johnson discussed the immense impact the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Go Further partnership have made for women in sub-Saharan Africa.
Launched in 2018, Go Further is an innovative public-private partnership between PEPFAR, the Bush Institute, UNAIDS, Merck, and Roche. The program has conducted more than 7.4 million cervical cancer screenings for women living with HIV and over 302,000 treatments for precancerous lesions have been performed.
“When President and Mrs. Bush left office, [PEPFAR] was having tremendous success when it came to screening, prevention, and treatment of HIV across the continent of Africa,” Johnson said. “But there was a piece that was missing. Women were surviving HIV, but they were succumbing to a disease that was entirely preventable…. Women living with HIV are up to six times more likely to develop cervical cancer. So, we got started on this right away at the Bush Institute in 2010, and in 2018, we launched the Go Further partnership.”
