US HIV funding cut is 'wake-up call' for S Africa
The US government's sudden decision to axe funding for HIV programmes is a "wake-up call" for South Africa, the country's health minister has told the BBC.
Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, responding to US termination notices issued late on Wednesday, said the cuts could lead to deaths, but he had instructed state-funded clinics to ensure no patient went without life-saving drugs.
There is chaos as many affected organisations scramble to find alternative help for some 900,000 HIV patients by the end of the day.
"Instead of a careful handover, we're being pushed off a cliff," said Kate Rees from the Anova Health Institute, one of the biggest recipients of special US funding to counter the spread of HIV.
The US's HIV programme was launched in 2003 by then US President George W Bush and is known as the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar).
Pepfar funding is distributed via the US government's main overseas aid agency USAID. It has been regarded as a ground-breaking scheme that has enabled some of the world's poorest people to access anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) and has saved more than 25 million lives worldwide.
A 90-day freeze on US foreign aid payments instituted by President Donald Trump on his first day in office last month has already upended the global aid system.
What's really driving Trump's fury with South Africa?
What is USAID and why is Trump poised to 'close it down'?
South Africa is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Pepfar, which contributes about 17% to its HIV/Aids programme, in which about 5.5 million people out of eight million people living with HIV receive ARVs.
Like all such US-funded organisations in South Africa, the Anova Health Institute was notified overnight on Wednesday about the decision by US President Donald Trump's administration to terminate tens of billions of dollars of aid contracts.
Dr Rees described the announcement as one of the "worst days" of her career, especially as there had been plans afoot to reduce the dependency of HIV programmes on donor aid.
This was to take place over the next five years, making it easier for the country's health department to take over, she said.
Health experts say Pepfar funding was also helping with research for a cure for HIV, and that the cuts would set that work back years.
The Desmond Tutu Health Foundation projects the US's move could result in as many as half a million deaths.
South Africa's leading Aids lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), warned the country could see a return to when HIV patients struggled to access necessary services for their treatment.
"We can't afford to die, we can't afford to go back to those years where we were suffering with access to services, especially for people living with HIV treatment," said TAC chair Sibongile Tshabalala.
She was speaking during a digital news conference on Thursday, in which representatives from organisations that work with HIV patients described the chaos and despair caused by the termination of the funding.
Ms Tshabalala, who has HIV, became emotional as she questioned how she and others like her would survive in the wake of the funding cuts.
South Africa's ARV programme is the largest in the world.
'My wife fears sex, I fear death' - impacts of the USAID freeze
Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats?
Why South Africa's health insurance is causing ructions
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Africa Daily
Focus on Africa
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Popular Mineral Water Sold at Costco Recalled Over Bacterial Contamination
Coca-Cola has issued a voluntary recall of 18-packs of 16.9-ounce glass Topo Chico mineral water due to possible contamination with Pseudomonas, a bacterium that can cause serious infections in people with weakened immune systems. The recall affects products sold between May 20 and May 29 at 40 Costco locations across five states: Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas. The impacted lot is labeled '#13A2541.' No illnesses have been reported, and Coca-Cola states that the health risk is very low for the general population. Affected customers can return the product to Costco for a full you recently purchased any Topo Chico mineral water, then it's time to check your fridge or pantry. On Wednesday, Coca-Cola issued a voluntary recall of its Topo Chico mineral water in five states due to concerns about potential contamination with a deadly bacteria for individuals with weakened immune systems known as Pseudomonas. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains, Pseudomonas is a group of bacteria that is "commonly found in the environment, like in soil and water." However, if it flourishes, it can "cause infections in the blood, lungs (pneumonia), urinary tract, or other parts of the body after surgery." A spokesperson confirmed to USA Today that the bottles were shipped to 40 retail locations across Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas, with Costco included among the affected retailers. Individuals who purchased contaminated Topo Chico are encouraged to return them to their local Costco for a full refund. Those who have further questions can call Coca-Cola at 1-800-GET-COKE (1-800-438-2653). Related: The Food Recall System Is Broken, and Experts Say We're All at Risk According to the brand's letter sent to Costco members on June 2, the recalled product bears the Lot Code #13A2541 on both the outer box and the neck of each bottle. It specifically affects the 18-packs of glass 16.9-ounce Topo Chico mineral water. The notice from Coca-Cola also stated that if you purchased one of the recalled packages, you can return it to your nearest Costco for a full refund. A Costco spokesperson noted that the products were all purchased between May 20 and May 29. No illnesses have been reported in connection with the recall. Coca-Cola also noted that the health consequences for those who accidentally consume the mineral water containing pseudomonas are "very low." However, the CDC advises that those most at risk include anyone on "breathing machines, have devices such as catheters, [or] have open wounds from surgery or burns." The Cleveland Clinic additionally noted that "It's rare for a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection to develop in people with a healthy immune system. But it can be serious and potentially deadly if you have a weakened immune system (immunocompromised)." That includes individuals living with conditions such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, HIV, diabetes, liver disease, or those who are pregnant. Symptoms of an infection may include fever, chills, muscle pain, earache, headache, nausea, or vomiting. If you experience any symptoms, seek out a medical expert immediately. Product recalled: 18-packs of glass 16.9-ounce Topo Chico mineral waterReason for recall: Potential Pseudomonas contaminationLot Code: #13A2541 States affected: Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and TexasStores affected: 40 separate Costco locationsRead the original article on Food & Wine
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump targeting of Mahmoud Khalil is baseless and has caused extreme psychological harm, lawyers say
NEW YORK — Attorneys for detained Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil in new filings say the Trump administration has damaged his reputation and severely undermined his ability to pursue a career in international diplomacy and human rights 'by baselessly identifying him as a risk to the foreign policy of the United States' based on his advocacy for Palestinians and criticism of Israel, 'marking him and his family as targets for harassment and notoriety.' '(The) longer the determination stands, the more reputational damage it does,' Khalil's legal team wrote. The New Jersey federal court filing came in support of Khalil's motion for a preliminary injunction in his habeas corpus case, which seeks his immediate release from custody. Lawyers are also calling for the vacating of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination as to why he should be deported, and — more broadly — an injunction stopping the federal government from enforcing a policy of arresting, detaining, and removing noncitizens who engage in speech supporting Palestinian rights or criticizing Israel. The Trump administration has not alleged Khalil broke any laws. It has sought to revoke his green card and deport him based on a rarely-used provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which empowers Rubio to expel someone from the country if their activities and beliefs are considered adverse to U.S. foreign policy interests, which in Khalil's case, pertains to U.S. support for Israel. Khalil's case in New Jersey challenging the legality of his detention is playing out separately from his immigration case in Louisiana. In April, the immigration judge ordered his deportation in finding the government had met its burden, a decision he intends to appeal. The federal New Jersey judge, Michael Farbiarz, has said he cannot be deported while his habeas corpus matter plays out. Agents from the Department of Homeland Security took Khalil into custody on March 8 as he arrived home to his Columbia-owned apartment with his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, from an iftar dinner. He was brought to lower Manhattan's 26 Federal Plaza for processing, driven to a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, overnight, and transported more than 1,000 miles away to Jena, Louisiana, the next morning, a Sunday, where he has since remained incarcerated at a detention center. In a ruling last week, Farbiarz, who is yet to rule on the legality of Khalil's detention, said the government's reasoning for seeking to deport him is likely unconstitutional. 'Our law asks about an 'ordinary person.' Would he know that [the rarely-used provision] could be used against him based on his speech inside the United States, however odious it might allegedly have been — speech that has not been affirmatively determined by the Secretary to have an impact on U.S. relations with other countries? The Court's answer is no,' Farbiarz wrote. In Khalil's parallel immigration case, the judge, Jamee Comans, last month heard testimony from the student activist and several experts who said his deportation could result in his kidnapping, torture, or even death due to his prominent criticism of Israel. Comans denied a renewed motion to end the deportation proceedings based on agents' failure to provide a warrant upon his arrest, The New York Times reported, and reserved issuing a decision on his bid for asylum. In the filings made public Thursday, Khalil's lawyers asked for permission to file under seal an expert declaration outlining the extreme psychological harm he's endured from the 'shock of unjust arrest and continued detention and family separation,' which they say 'will inevitably severely worsen absent release.' A judge gave government lawyers until Friday to object to filing the assessment under seal. 'These harms include the loss of Mr. Khalil's liberty; the chilling of his First Amendment protected activities; the separation from his family, particularly his wife and newborn child; and psychological harm specific to his arrest and detention,' Khalil's lawyers wrote. A Palestinian who was raised in a refugee camp in Syria, Khalil came to the U.S. in December 2022 on a student visa, married Abdalla, who's from the Midwest, in November 2023, and became a lawful permanent resident in 2024. He completed his Master's degree at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in December and would have graduated last month. Abdalla accepted his diploma on his behalf a month after giving birth to their first child, a baby boy. With experience working for a British embassy and interning with the United Nations in New York, Khalil was selected to play the role of a mediator and negotiator between the university's administration and students during campus protests last year against Israel's war on Gaza and Columbia's ties to the Israeli regime. Donald Trump and his Cabinet members have repeatedly characterized Khalil's advocacy and criticism of Israel in general as antisemitic and inherently supportive of Hamas. The Trump administration has since targeted hundreds of international students for their advocacy for Gazans and criticism of Israeli military activity. Khalil has denounced antisemitism, and in his public-facing role speaking to media on behalf of protesters before his arrest, he repeatedly maintained that the movement should advocate for justice and equality for all groups, telling CNN in April 2024, 'As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other.' _____
Business Wire
an hour ago
- Business Wire
Lieff Cabraser & Farella Braun + Martel Announce That University of California Researchers Have Filed a Class Action Lawsuit Against the Trump Administration for the Illegal and Unconstitutional Termination of Critical Research Grants
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lieff Cabraser & Farella Braun + Martel Announce that a group of six University of California faculty and other researchers have filed a class action in federal court against the Trump Administration on behalf of all UC researchers whose previously approved agency grants were terminated pursuant to Executive Orders or other directives of President Trump, as implemented through the Department of Government Efficiency ('DOGE'). University of California Researchers File Class Action Suit Against Trump Administration for Illegal & Unconstitutional Termination of Critical Research Grants Plaintiffs seek a declaration that these grant terminations violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers, the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, and the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process, as well as statutes that govern agencies' missions and grantmaking and the Administrative Procedure Act. As detailed in the Complaint, these abrupt cancellations of already awarded grants 'ignored or contradicted the purposes for which Congress created the granting agencies and appropriated funds, and dispensed with the regular procedures and due process afforded grantees under the Administrative Procedure Act, in implementing the Trump Administration's political 'cost-cutting' agenda and ideological purity campaign.' According to UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a leading constitutional law scholar and co-counsel on the case, 'President Trump and DOGE have arbitrarily cut off funding to researchers throughout the University of California system in clear violation of the Constitution and federal laws. There has not been a semblance of due process or compliance with the procedures required by federal statutes and regulations. This has caused great harm to a large number of faculty and other researchers and the UC research enterprise as a whole, with potentially grave consequences to everyone in society who benefits from the research in a myriad of disciplines." As described by Plaintiff Dr. Neeta Thakur, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at UCSF, 'The EPA has abruptly terminated a three-year grant that was supporting research on how wildfire smoke affects the lungs, heart, and brain of all Californians. My colleagues and I at UCSF and UC Berkeley have worked on this important project for two years, and its sudden end — communicated through a simple form letter — puts our progress in danger. This decision disrupts our ongoing work with community-based organizations and stops us from generating life-saving information designed to improve public health and protect the well-being of all Californians, especially those living in at-risk communities.' Plaintiff Jedda Foreman, the Director of the Center for Environmental Learning at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, explains, 'My team and I at the Lawrence Hall of Science earned NSF grants to make science education more accessible to all learners. Instilling a love of science is critical to envisioning and creating a better future for us all. In one day, we lost two projects, and nearly 75% of our funding, because of terminations by NSF. A week later, NSF terminated yet another one of our projects. These terminations haven't just affected our team, but also our longtime community partners and thousands of students across the United States.' These are just two of hundreds of examples of the damage wrought by the Trump Administration's illegal and unconstitutional terminations. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, seeks a return to the pre-Trump Administration process of orderly grantmaking that aligns with congressionally authorized purposes, and affords due process to grant-funded researchers. Plaintiffs seek, for themselves and the class of UC researchers who have suffered unlawful grant terminations, an injunction restoring their lost funding, providing them sufficient time to complete the work for which their grants were originally approved, and preventing further illegal grant terminations. Plaintiffs will be filing a motion for a temporary restraining order on June 5, 2025. The case, No. 3:25-cv-4737, is assigned to the Honorable Rita F. Lin. Background on the Lawsuit Each year, researchers in the UC system receive hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the full spectrum of federal agencies, ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency, to the National Science Foundation, to the National Institutes of Health. These grants fund the production of new knowledge and fuel the development of discoveries that greatly benefit society at large. The grants have also been key to the innovation that has consistently earned the UC system pride of place among research institutions, including first place in the list of universities with the most utility patents. They have also made the UC Berkeley campus the number one ranked public research in institution in the world for nine of the past ten years. Before President Trump took office, federal grantmaking proceeded under the authority of Congress, which appropriated taxpayer funds for specific public purposes. For decades, agencies carried out these statutory directives and observed due process in making, renewing, and (only seldom) terminating grants. They each adhered to their own grant regulations and followed Administrative Procedure Act processes when modifying such regulations. On the rare occasions when agencies terminated grants, they did so pursuant to predictable, regularized processes and terminated grants only for reasons stated in the regulations. All of this changed abruptly on January 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day). After January 20, 2025, Defendants Donald J. Trump and DOGE, through a flurry of Executive Orders and other directives, commanded the Federal Agency Defendants to terminate scores of previously awarded research grants. As the Complaint notes, the 'abrupt, wholesale, and unilateral termination of these grants has violated the Constitution's bedrock principle of separation of powers and its guarantees of freedom of speech and due process; flouted the Impoundment Control Act limits on the Executive's ability to withhold or redirect congressionally appropriated money; ignored statutory requirements that agencies fulfill their substantive missions and fund congressionally specified activities; contravened agency-specific grant-making regulations that cannot by law be revised on an abrupt, unexplained, chaotic basis; and violated the Administrative Procedure Act through this arbitrary, capricious, and ultra vires conduct.' As further detailed in the Complaint, grounds the agencies have offered for such terminations were spurious. In some cases, agency correspondence to grantees asserted that grant termination would reduce public costs and promote government efficiency, although no evidence was provided to support this claim. In other cases, agency communications made it clear that grants were being terminated to further Defendant Trump's political objectives, which included the elimination of research on climate, environmental justice, 'gender ideology,' and 'DEI.' These grant terminations are occurring not because the grant-funded research departed from its originally approved purpose, but because that purpose now offends the political agenda and ideological requirements of the Trump Administration. In terminating these grants, the agencies have violated the Constitution, numerous federal statutes, and their own regulations. Plaintiff UC researchers have suffered concrete financial, professional, and other harms from Defendants' unilateral termination of grants for projects to which they have already dedicated time and effort; for research upon which they have staked careers and reputations; and for work with research teams through which they endeavored to train a next generation. These terminations have impaired and will impair the public-serving research mission of the UC system and the concern for public welfare that undergirds it. Named Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class will continue to suffer such harms on an ongoing basis, and will experience increasing and irreparable harm absent the court declaration and injunction they seek through this lawsuit.
