UPDATE: Trump officials balk at cutting anti-AIDS drugs and endangering millions
MAYBE 20 million people getting anti-AIDS medications from Pepfar won’t be cut off
Days after moving to shut down the nation’s international anti-AIDS program, Trump officials backed off from that plan, at least in part.
Pepfar, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, provides anti-HIV medications for more than 20 million people worldwide, including more than 500,000 children with HIV.
The N.Y. Times reported yesterday that the Trump administration had instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs had already been obtained and were sitting in local clinics.
The administration had also moved to stop Pepfar funding from moving to clinics, hospitals and other organizations in low-income countries, the Times reported.
However, today the State Department agreed to allow funding for “life-saving humanitarian assistance.”
The N.Y. Times reported, “The waiver, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seemed to allow for the distribution of H.I.V. medications, but whether the waiver extended to preventive drugs or other services offered by the program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was not immediately clear.”
A memo by Rudio defined humanitarian assistance as “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance,” the Washington Post reported. But funding will not be allowed for programs that involve “abortions, family planning conferences … gender” or diversity programs, “transgender surgeries, or other nonlife saving assistance.”
“Implementers of existing lifesaving humanitarian assistance programs should continue or resume work if they have stopped,” the memo said, but “this resumption is temporary in nature, and except by separate waiver or as required to carry out this waiver, no new contracts shall be entered into.”
The Pepfar cutoff was part of a 90-day suspension of foreign aid programs, pending a review of whether they comply with Trump policies,
“PEPFAR provides lifesaving antiretrovirals for more than 20 million people—and stopping its funding essentially stops their HIV treatment,” International AIDS Society president Beatriz Grinsztejn, MD, PhD, said in a statement. “It makes no sense to suddenly stop this incredible catalyst of our global progress towards ending HIV as a threat to public health and individual well-being.”
For more information, see our earlier Jan. 28 article, “Trump officials shut down Pepfar’s anti-AIDS operations, endangering millions” and “A description of Pepfar and its live-saving work”.
