What would it mean if PEPFAR — the widely hailed anti-HIV effort — isn't reauthorized?

Harry Hausler was speaking at an event a few months ago in Khayelitsha, a Cape Town township, where he ran into several people he knew but hadn't seen in years.

Hausler, a family physician, had first met them back around 2007, a period when people living with AIDS in South Africa could not count on getting access to life-saving treatment. These patients were "really emaciated" at that time, says Hausler. "Their immune systems were completely depleted."

When Hausler saw them 16 years later, they were in very different shape.

"They'd started antiretroviral treatment, rebounded, gained their strength and their weight back and subsequently had long and happy lives," he says. "Some of them have had children who have been born HIV-negative because the mothers were on antiretroviral treatment, so they didn't transmit the virus to their children. And some of those children are now graduating from university in South Africa!"

Hausler, who these days is CEO of, has little doubt what turned life around for these and millions of other people.