Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush’s AIDS relief program aimed at Africa exceeded its goal for the number of patients reached in its first five years with more than 2.1 million men, women and children getting treatment, the State Department said.

The U.S. government has provided $18.8 billion for treatment and prevention of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since the program started in 2003. The goal was to treat 2 million people. It’s the largest amount spent by any nation to combat a single disease, according to a report issued today.

The success of the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has drawn support from Democrats as well as Bush’s fellow Republicans in Congress. Lawmakers voted in July to reauthorize the plan and more than double the funding to as much as $48 billion during the next five years.

President-elect Barack Obama voted in favor of the reauthorization, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden shepherded the legislation through the Senate, indicating broad-based support in the next administration, said Mark Dybul, the department’s global AIDS coordinator.

The U.S. program provides drugs for two-thirds of the estimated 3 million people in Africa getting treatment for HIV. Deaths from AIDS worldwide fell 10 percent in 2007 as more patients gained access to drug combinations that can keep the virus in check, according to a United Nations report in July.

Managing the Disease

“A disease that was once thought to be a death sentence, a disease that was once thought sure to separate parents from their children, is now a disease that America is helping people to live with and to manage,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington.

The UN report found that the number of people newly infected remained unchanged compared with the previous year. The Bush administration received criticism in the early years of the program for placing too much emphasis in prevention efforts on abstaining from sex and not providing enough condoms.

The State Department reported today that PEPFAR supplied more than 2.2 billion condoms worldwide.

An estimated 32 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, with 22 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS, the New York-based agency that coordinates the United Nations’ response to the epidemic.

Another result of the program has been to bolster health- care overall in the countries involved.

“We’ve supported a massive expansion of the health systems in these countries,” Dybul said. “The data that are available suggest that this intervention in HIV/AIDS is actually building the health care for other areas and having a spillover effect.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 12, 2009 13:02 EST