((The hill)-A cross-party initiative to combat HIV and AIDS in Africa is a collateral damage to President Donald Trump’s guideline to stop all US foreign support, although the efforts to exempt humanitarian aid and life-saving medication were excluded from the three-month financial freezen.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a memo out of foreign policy.
The break in global health financing has frozen in health clinics throughout Africa, which rely on the President’s emergency plan for AIDS relief (Pepper) and raises immediate fears of rapidly spreading HIV on the continent.
It is not unusual for a up-to-date administration to order a review of existing programs or even have up-to-date editions for the Pepper program.
“But you know that there is a distinction between reviewing a program, surveying questions about a program and the full question of his life -saving mission,” said Ratevosian. “What is published last time [few days] Is something completely different that is chaos, confusion and potential reversal of one of the greatest achievements of America. ”
The Pepper of 6.5 billion US dollars is considered one of the subsequent programs in America in Africa. It is attributed to save 25 million human lives and differentiate the AIDS epidemic.
Experts and aid organizations grant the alarm over the sudden hold. The stop work commands came without warning and sowing immediate chaos and confusion.
Pepfar employs more than 270,000 health personnel. They were told that they should stop serving patients and not to go to work.
Clinics concluded their doors and reject patients. The administration even asked them to stop the anti -retroviral HIV medication they had in stock because they were delivered with Pepper Funds.
Some companies have private funds and other Stopgap measures that can fall back on, but the situation is more tough for others.
“There are programs on the entire continent that offer treatment and prevention that now do not deliver what they normally do,” said Mitchell Warren, Managing Director of AVAC, an international non -profit organization that focuses on HIV prevention. “There will be people who will return to the clinic from this week who returned to the clinic or thought that they had an appointment to return to the clinic to get more medication, and it will not be able to get it. “
Just as suddenly when the stop work memo was released, the Foreign Ministry seemed to be a somewhat opposite course and announced on Tuesday that life-saving treatments and medication are not subject to freezing. However, the waiver did not provide any specific guidelines on the services qualified for the liberation and deepens the confusion on site.
Warren said the waiver seems to enable the clinics to resume HIV medication, but it is not entirely clear. Without clarification, he said, clinics continue to hold medication.
“If you would say life -saving medication, I would tell you that everyone in anti -retroviral therapy or everyone who receives antiretroviral prevention is life -saving. But it is open to interpretation, ”said Warren.
“And we still have no official notification from Pepfar or USAID or from [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Which programs qualify for this waiver, ”he added.
If a person with HIV stops taking the medication, the virus is no longer suppressed and can multiply what spreads to weakened immune systems, diseases and then to others.
The external AID Freeze comes for a precarious time for the Pepper program, as some of its permits take place in March. Pepper has traditionally been reorganized for five years, but the Omnibus financing calculation in March 2024 only extended it for one year.
“Historically speaking, Pepper has had enormous support for cross -party support, which enabled him to sit outside of regular politics,” said Jenior, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health & HIV policy program at KFF. “That is no longer the case.”
Republicans carried out the aid program In your crosshairs In the last few weeks after the Foreign Ministry notified the Congress last month that nurses who worked in Pfepfar-financed clinics in Mozambique had carried out almost a dozen abortions.
While the abortion in Mozambique is legal, the US law prohibits all Pepper Aid recipients of the provision of abortion services.
MP Brian Mast (R-Fla.), The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House, has requested an investigation.
Mast entered the stool position and promised to examine the US foreign policy abroad abroad.
And Senator Jim Risch (R-IDAHO), Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate, said at the beginning of this month that Pepper was “certainly in danger”.
But Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), A member and former chairman of the Senate subcommittee, who finances the Foreign Ministry, still gave Republican colleagues who support the program.
“Some very. I spoke to a number of my colleagues who respect and recognize the decades of influence that Peppert attributed to the salvation of literally millions of human life in several administrations to President George W. Bush, who has launched it, ”he said Opposite The Hill.
He said he hoped “decisions that will be made today, today, in the future, do not stop the program from continuing its critical life -saving mission.”
Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) spoke on Wednesday before the Senate financial committee to confirm the program in the hearing to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and asked the candidate for health and human services whether he supported Pepper.
Kennedy said he would support the program “absolutely” and try to strengthen it.
