Activists stack 200 coffins at U.S. state dept. to protest deadly AIDS relief cuts
The message: People will die without the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief .
Pink News and The Advocate report on the latest protest against the Trump administration’s deep cuts in foreign aid, which public health officials estimate will lead to 6 million AIDS deaths if they are not reversed.
By Chantelle Billson for Pink News
Activists have sent an unmissable message to the US government: people will die without the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
In January, secretary of state Marco Rubio announced that PEPFAR – the United States governmental initiative, set up by George W Bush to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developing world – would be exempt from a freeze on international aid funding.
However, the program is still not functioning, senior public policy advocate at the Human Rights Campaign, Matt Rose, told The Advocate. Rose said some distribution of life-saving medication is happening, but it’s “massively low,” with the situation “getting very precarious.”
In response, a protest was help to send a clear message to the Trump administration: people will die without PEPFAR.
The protest, held on Thursday (17 April) and led by Health Gap, Housing Works and AIDS activist Peter Staley, saw around 30 people march from the National Academy of Sciences to the State Department gate.
At the US State Department, HIV advocates piled up hundreds of mock coffins in a bid to demand the full restoration of PEPFAR.
Rose hopes that the public protest will lead to change within the government: “We have seen the administration make moves back after public protests before.
“We hope Rubio will remember that PEPFAR saves lives.”
Those responsible for the distribution were hired under contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration has essentially shut down.
Within days of Trump taking office, Elon Musk’s so-called Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) embarked on a bogus mission to eliminate alleged corruption within the agency. In February, Musk tweeted a baseless claim that USAID “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”
In response to Musk’s claims about USAID’s “bioweapon research”, journalist Mehdi Hasan said: “He just tweets out complete disinformation, complete lies (even if it was leaked from a lab, which we have no evidence for, COVID isn’t a bioweapon and USAID didn’t fund its creation) and millions instantly believe his lies.”
Under Trump’s administration, the provision of HIV prevention drugs has also been limited to pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Experts and HIV charities have warned that cuts to prevention initiatives could have devastating effects on infection rates around the world.
