The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
In four weeks the Trump administration has eviscerated a programme that took two decades to build and saved more than 25 million lives.
Pepfar (or the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) was providing global care, drugs and outreach to prevent and treat HIV/Aids, and is one of the biggest casualties of the cuts to the wider USAID budgets.
Yesterday, USAID/Pepfar-funded HIV organisations in South Africa were told their grants had been permanently terminated for the “convenience” of the US government.
Although South Africa has been trying to wean itself off foreign aid, it's historically been the largest recipient of Pepfar’s support (over $8 billion since 2003), which has gone a long way to treating the 7.8 million people living with HIV in the country.
As detailed in this must-read piece from the FT’s Johannesburg correspondent, for some, the funding cuts are a death sentence.
