During a keynote at the Foundation for the NIH's mHealth Summit in Washington D.C. last week, Ambassador Eric Goosby announced that the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) had joined the mHealth Alliance, a consortium created by the Vodafone Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the UN Foundation. PEPFAR is now a founding member of the Alliance.

PEPFAR's participation in the mHealth Alliance will increase the use of mobile-based tools for treating and preventing HIV/AIDS in developing countries. Phones for Health, a public-private partnership led by PEPFAR: Phones-for-Health plans to "make timely, relevant information available to program managers and service providers, while also helping PEPFAR achieve its ambitious goals — to support treatment for 2 million HIV-infected people, support prevention of 7 million new infections, and support care for 10 million people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in an accountable and sustainable way," according to PEPFAR's site.

Here's PEPFAR's raison d'etre: Launched in 2003, The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) aims to combat global HIV/AIDS. Through PEPFAR, the U.S. has already committed more than $25 billion to the cause; the agency had also sponsored life-saving antiretroviral treatment for more than 2.1 million men, women and children HIV/AIDS, care for more than 10 million people with HIV/AIDS, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs that allowed nearly 240,000 babies to be born HIV-free.

In September, the mHealth Alliance appointed David Aylward as its first executive director. During MobiHealthNews' interview with Aylward, he discussed his previous experience, plans for the mHealth Alliance, differences between mHealth solutions in developed and developing markets and whether mHealth could be used as a starting point to build a larger eHealth system from the “outside-in.” Be sure to revisit the interview here.

For more, read the PEPFAR - mHealth Alliance announcement's press release here.