The AIDS ambulance program threatens the closure. The decision can kill hundreds of thousands of people and throw an epidemic.
US Ambassador to Uganda, Natalie A. Brown, visits the National Health and Diagnostics Laboratory for Pepfar in Camanda, Uganda.
(Chris Lubug / US Embassy in Uganda)
On January 27, it looked as if the Trump administration made a death sentence of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom survive with HIV/AIDS thanks to the most successful foreign aid healthcare program. The US government has effectively ordered clinics and hospitals across Africa and countries such as Haiti, Brazil and India to cancel meetings and turn people who showed their regular doses of rescue antiretroviral drugs. Panic spread to more than 50 poor drugs.
Then, at the end of January 28, Secretary of State Mark Rubio issued a “refusal”, which May let Some healthcare items to start again. But the Pepfar, the Presidential Emergency Program for AIDS, remains threatened, though not exaggeration – in 2003 it was exaggerated. A million mothers’ gear to the baby.
PEPFAR deserves great respect for the US in countries receiving help. Moreover, just a few years ago, the program also enjoyed the preferred two -party support in the US Congress, even from conservative members, in part because gospel Christians were delighted with it and actually managed many hospitals and clinics in Africa conducting that spend medicines that live. In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Congress resumed Pepfar without disputes.
Current Issue
As soon as Trump administration reported this this week, the crisis suffered. The basis of AIDS studies (Amphora), an American propaganda group, believes that more than 222,000 people are picked up by ARV each day. The administration not only froze funding, but also closed the PEPFAR data system.
Emily Bass has spent decades, studying and writing about a global campaign against AIDS; Her book 2021. To finish the plague: AmericaThis is a convincing story of how grassroots movements in the US and Africa eventually put pressure on the US government on action. She told me about her girlfriend in Uganda, whose clinic ended ARV, and already postponed people. “Let’s also not forget mental health,” she said. “People in Africa have just felt the same fear and tension as Americans when the administration also stopped Medicaid today.”
As the US Ambassador to Zambia from 2017 to 2020, Dan Foot ran the PEPFAR program. He is delighted with the program and warned that it was being eliminated. “Pepfar stop will lead to AIDS blast in Africa, leading to the AIDS epidemic, a period. This is how global movement among the countries works,” he said. “HIV/AIDS is extremely virulent when it goes there. It’s like a steamer.”
Fooo also explained why Pepfar is vital for us national security: “If we continue to be superpowers, we need to make sure that citizens of the world continue to love and respect us. If we have a good name abroad, ordinary people are putting pressure on their governments to support or create alliances with the United States and are probably the largest key to maintaining the US national security. “
“Instead,” added a foot, “we started walking and beat every ally we have in the shin. China will absolutely use the end of the Pepfar.”
Unfortunately, the latest PEPFAR threat was littered with the news of Trump’s simultaneous suspension of many other internal federal programs. Moreover, American things The media failed In recent years, either to report on the constant success of PEPFAR or to document the growing danger for its future.
The PEPFAR budget for the current year is $ 7.5 billion. That’s half of what single Expenses for the US Navy Air Force. For more than two decades since George W. Bush has started a major corruption scandal.
The cost of HIV/AIDS medicines has fallen, but they are still out of reach of most people in poor countries. A few years ago, Jean Wiliam Pope, a Haitian doctor who manages the ARV Pepfar distribution per 100,000 people in Haiti, told me that drugs cost $ 250-300 per year. “The United States provides 90 percent of our needs. Without this assistance, thousands of Haitians die every month.”
