About two decades ago, Namibia was one of the hardest-hit countries in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. More than one in three adults tested positive for HIV.

Dr. Mark Dybul remembers visiting a clinic in rural Namibia and meeting a woman and her baby. She was HIV-positive and was terrified of passing the virus on to the child. She named her baby No Hope in the local language.

"That's one of the most devastating things you could ever hear," Dybul says.

A game changer

The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, soon changed everything.

President George W. Bush created PEPFAR in 2003 and reauthorized it in 2008. Dybul was the principal architect of PEPFAR while he was at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and he was later appointed U.S. global AIDS coor

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