Latest news with #HIVVaccine
Mail & Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- Mail & Guardian
NGOs count the cost of lost United States funding
No service: The US government's funding cuts have put further strain on already overloaded clinics and forced some to close their doors. (Delwyn Verasamy) South Africa's non-profit organisations are still counting the costs of the cessation of US funding earlier this year, with financial shortfalls leading to healthcare job losses while critical HIV vaccine services and research have been heavily scaled back. US President Donald Trump announced in January that he was cutting US Agency for International Development ( According to official data, USAid disbursed $24.5 billion to organisations in the 2024 financial year. Accountability Lab, a global network for transparency and open government, ran a survey of 266 organisations affected by the freeze from 1 to 18 May, and a third reported being 'at imminent risk of closure', with African countries — Kenya, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Ghana — the most affected. 'Nine of the top 10 most affected are African countries, with El Salvador rounding out the top 10. Others include South Africa, Cameroon, Senegal and the US,' said Accountability Lab's global communications director Sheena Adams. 'Worryingly, 21% have only one month of financial resources remaining, while 24% report a three-month financial runway. 'In terms of job losses, almost 55% of respondents reported having furloughed or laid off staff, with a further 14% confirming that layoffs were under consideration. According to the state department, the US government committed $330 million in aid to South Africa last year, with $318.2 million coming from USAid. The lion's share, $219.7 million, was for HIV/Aids, followed by $43.11 million for basic health, $31.8 million for operating expenses, $7.512 million to environmental protection, $7.006 million for trade policy and regulation, $3.677 million for agriculture, $3.512 million for government and civil society and $1.608 million to basic education. The aid suspension will roll back progress in the fight against HIV/Aids, says activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). 'The USAid and Pepfar [the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] funding freeze has had a chilling effect on the global fight against HIV/Aids, particularly in countries like South Africa that bear a high burden of disease,' TAC spokesperson Xabisa Qwabe said. 'Many community-led organisations — including treatment literacy programmes, support groups and outreach initiatives — have had to scale down or suspend operations. 'Pepfar funding [disbursed by TAC received substantial support from USAid/Pepfar through the Ritshidze Project, which enabled it to monitor service delivery, engage communities and hold the health system accountable. 'At its peak, up to 60% or more of TAC's operational budget was supported through this funding stream,' Qwabe said, adding that dozens of jobs had been lost. 'Staff retrenchments have occurred, particularly among community health educators and coordinators working in high-burden districts. The exact number may vary by province, but it has affected dozens of livelihoods. 'TAC's presence in many communities has been scaled back, meaning fewer workshops on treatment literacy, weaker monitoring of medicine stockouts and reduced mobilisation for treatment access and rights-based advocacy.' Pepfar funding didn't directly pay for medication in South Africa but funded crucial support systems. 'The funding freeze has disrupted these support structures, leading to reduced testing, longer turnaround times and greater strain on overburdened clinics. Patients are increasingly falling through the cracks, especially in under-resourced communities,' she said. TAC is actively seeking alternative funding, including local philanthropic partners, international donors, and development agencies, and has urged the government to step up support for civil society organisations. 'While some government departments have expressed willingness to explore support avenues, this is yet to materialise in substantial funding,' Qwabe added. The solution, she said, is the urgent resumption of Pepfar funding with clear transition plans. 'We also need a stronger financial commitment from the South African government to support community-led health programmes. There should be greater investment in building sustainable, locally owned health infrastructure that doesn't rely solely on foreign aid. Civil society must be recognised as a vital partner in achieving these goals. 'This funding crisis is not just a bureaucratic issue — it's a humanitarian emergency. 'Patients are losing access to services and dedicated community health workers are losing jobs they've held for years. These are the very people who ensured South Africa's HIV treatment scale-up succeeded.' 'We're beginning to hear reports that HIV testing is not being done as much as it was before, viral load testing and CD4 count testing is coming down, which obviously will have an impact on our ability to keep people virally suppressed. 'People will get sicker, and once they are no longer virally suppressed, they are also at risk of transmitting the virus,' Gray warned. 'We will probably see both an increase in morbidity and, if we're not careful, mortality in both children and adults who are not properly in care.' She noted that USAid and National Institute of Health (NIH) funding had supported scientific trials, adding: 'This has huge effects on HIV science and TB science, because we were involved in everything from vaccine research and development in both HIV and TB, as well as HIV cure, TB treatment trials and HIV treatment trials.' 'It also affects the NIH funding that supported clinical trial research infrastructure, laboratory research infrastructure and the whole ecosystem required to do innovation in HIV and TB — from discovery to pre-clinical testing to clinical trials to biomarker discovery. 'That whole ecosystem of innovation is severely hampered. The NIH funding was substantial — up to $250 million per annum.' There have been job losses affecting a range of people involved in the work, from scientists and master's students to nurses and drivers. 'It has a huge impact on the human resources for research. That has an effect both at a macro and micro level on the economy. Drivers, counsellors, recruiters — all of them get retrenched, which means their families are thrown into poverty. 'If you have a quarter of a million US dollars of revenue coming in, all of that gets taxed, so there's also an impact on revenue collection.' For example, the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg has retrenched 70 staff members after losing NIH funding, which comprised 66% of its income. 'A lot more people will be retrenched over the next couple of months as the money dries up. 'Unless the research unit is able to diversify its funding stream it faces even further closure,' Gray said. The loss of its USAid funding also forced the Brilliant Consortium to hal 'The vaccine manufacturing has been put on hold but we managed to find funding [from the Gates Foundation] to conduct a smaller study at a single site in South Africa,' Gray said. The 'Many of our partners have completely shut down programmes and had to retrench staff and we are already feeling that we have to fill some of those gaps. 'Even testing kids the other day, we were down to one … how can you turn someone away from knowing their status? In the community there are concerns about whether people will be able to get their medication for their children,' she said. 'As a community-based organisation that has been serving our local community for 35 years, it's just heartbreaking to see the ripple effects of what has progressed. 'It's those who don't have options who are going to suffer the most. 'It is tragic. HIV has always been a global initiative with global targets and countries working together as a global community — and that has been destroyed.'
CBS News
30-05-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Trump administration ending multiple HIV vaccine studies, scientists and officials say
The Trump administration has moved to end funding for a broad swath of HIV vaccine research, saying current approaches are enough to counter the virus, multiple scientists and federal health officials say. Notifications that the funding would not be extended were relayed Friday to researchers, who were told by National Institutes of Health officials that the Department of Health and Human Services had elected "to go with currently available approaches to eliminate HIV" instead. The cuts will shutter two major HIV vaccine research efforts that were first funded by the NIH in 2012 at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Scripps Research Institute, multiple scientists said. A spokesperson for Moderna said the vaccine manufacturer's clinical trials through the NIH's HIV Vaccine Trials Network have also been put on pause. One senior NIH official said the HHS had also instructed the agency not to issue any more funding in the next fiscal year for HIV vaccine research, with only a small handful of exceptions. A budgetary rule change specifically targeted at HIV vaccine research is also expected to lead to another cut to the NIH's awards for studies initiated by scientists, an official said. The change, to be finalized shortly, inflates the accounting for the upfront cost of studies into HIV vaccines funded by the agency. Instead of the cost of a five-year grant being spread out over five years, the NIH plans to make HIV vaccine dollars from multi-year grants all count toward a single year, the official said, making it harder for them to get funded. A spokesperson for HHS told CBS News that "complex and duplicative health programs have resulted in serious duplication of efforts," saying that "27 separate programs that address HIV/AIDS" had spent $7.5 billion. "The Administration believes the United States should have the best medical research in the world. To that end, we are advancing policies to maximize the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar and ensure proper oversight of this funding," HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said. Hilliard claimed "critical HIV/AIDS programs will continue" under the new agency that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed creating, dubbed the Administration for a Healthy America. "For HIV vaccine design and development, we've begun to see light at the end of the tunnel after many years of research. This is a terrible time to cut it off. We're beginning to get close. We're getting good results out of clinical trials," said Dennis Burton, an immunology professor at Scripps Research. Burton warned that their HIV vaccine research could not simply be turned back on, even if a future administration decided to change course on HIV funding. He said ongoing experiments would be shuttered, and researchers assembled to study the issue would be forced to refocus their careers on other topics. "This is a decision with consequences that will linger. This is a setback of probably a decade for HIV vaccine research," Burton said. The cancellation of the funds comes weeks ahead of the Food and Drug Administration's June 19 deadline for deciding on approval of lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable drug to prevent HIV. The drug, which is being brought to the commercial market by drugmaker Gilead Sciences, builds on NIH-backed research into earlier HIV medications. The drug's availability could lead to a significant drop in HIV cases worldwide, since a study found it was 100% effective in preventing transmission. An NIH official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, rebuked the claim that the effectiveness of current HIV prevention strategies meant a vaccine was no longer needed. "The only way of ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S. and AIDS pandemic worldwide" is with a vaccine, they said. Developing an effective HIV vaccine has been an elusive target for researchers, though scientists have hailed recent breakthroughs in the field. "HIV has established roadblocks to us fighting it off, which are unparalleled in vaccinology. We've had to learn what each of the roadblocks are and to devise ways to overcome it. This virus mutates so quickly," said Duke professor of medicine Dr. Barton Ford Haynes, who is part of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute. Haynes said their work was essentially combining multiple different vaccines as part of their approach to designing an effective HIV vaccine. He praised lenacapavir as a "wonderful development for the field," but said there was still a need for a vaccine. Lenacapavir requires injections every six months to remain effective, a challenging proposition even before steep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's domestic HIV programs and U.S.-backed HIV/AIDS foreign aid programs. "The hope was that adding an HIV vaccine to all the preventive measures that we have would finally allow us to end the pandemic," Haynes said.
News24
27-05-2025
- Business
- News24
We call your name so you may not sleep: An ancestral reckoning for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The US Secretary of Health may continue to operate with impunity and will probably never face formal consequences. But he will not escape the memory of what he has done, writes Tian Johnson. Earlier this month, the world marked HIV Vaccine Awareness Day. But there is little to commemorate and even less to celebrate. This year, we did not light candles or wear ribbons. Instead, we invoke. We remember. We indict. And we speak directly to the man whose name sits atop the crumbling pillars of US global health leadership, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is a man whose record of anti-science crusades and institutional sabotage is long, unapologetic, and deliberate. Kennedy began to engineer a health policy crisis within days of taking office. His decades-long hostility toward public health institutions has now taken governmental form, weaponised at scale, under the guise of freedom and sovereignty. READ | Trump's HIV funding cuts will hit diabetes and cervical cancer treatment hard. Here's why He oversaw the suspension of NIH-led global HIV vaccine trials, terminated collaborations with African research centres, and slashed funding to NIH-supported HIV prevention programmes, redirecting resources to politically loyal actors whose mandates serve ideology, not health. But this is not a lament for lost funding or technical setbacks. It is a reckoning for choices made in full awareness of their consequences. The dismantling of HIV vaccine research and the evisceration of the NIH's global agenda was carried out by a leadership that understood exactly who would suffer and moved forward anyway. And so, on this day, we call not just on the living, but on those who have walked this path long before us. We call on our ancestors, not as decoration, but as witnesses. Calculated dehumanisation From southern Africa, we call forth the spirit of Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana. She was a medium of the mhondoro lion spirits, a custodian of Shona sovereignty, and a revolutionary woman who resisted British colonisation with fearless conviction. Nehanda was hanged in 1898 after leading a rebellion against the violent extraction of African life and land. Today, she returns not in chains but in fury, standing in the halls of power where death is now dealt through policy. Her spirit recognises the patterns. The calculated dehumanisation. The indifference dressed as pragmatism. She knows what happens when powerful men decide which bodies are worth saving. From the ashes of the Kingdom of Kongo rises Kimpa Vita, burned alive in 1706 for daring to preach that God was Black and that the divine resided in the people, not in the churches of the empire. She was a prophet, a young woman of vision and fire, who tried to reimagine faith as justice, not hierarchy. Her death was the result of a system that feared truth spoken from below. She, too, understands this moment. Vita knows the language of erasure, the slow burial of community knowledge, and the silencing of those who speak for the sick, the poor, the queer, and the dispossessed - the othered. And from the spiritual traditions of the African diaspora in Haiti and beyond, the Loa rise, those powerful intermediaries between the living and the divine, guardians of the crossroads. There is Papa Legba, opener of gates, standing now between justice and denial. There is Mambo Ayizan, protector of spiritual knowledge and initiator of healing, watching silently as the institutions that once pledged public health abandon it piece by piece. And there is Baron Samedi, lord of the dead, dressed in a top hat and dark glasses, smiling grimly over the graves of those who died waiting for medicines, for trials, for care that was never intended to reach them. Calling for accountability These spirits do not come for ceremony. They come for accountability. And they have come because we, the living, have tried every other way. We have submitted proposals, made calls, pleaded our case in boardrooms and on the steps of capitols. We have translated need into metrics, urgency into infographics, survival into strategic plans. But our truth has been met with silence. We watch this unfold with the clarity of those who have seen it before. African nations have long served as the proving ground for Western science, called upon when samples are needed, when disease becomes global enough to matter, when headlines demand a success story. But when the trials require sustained commitment, when justice demands partnership, when the story shifts from generosity to accountability, the exits are already marked. This is not new. This is history repeating itself under sterile lights and air-conditioned deception. READ | Budget 3.0: US aid loss leaves R1.3bn funding hole for SA's HIV programme But the lie is no longer sustainable. The idea that American health leadership exists to serve the world is dead. And we will not attend its funeral with reverence. We speak now with fire, because our grief has fermented into something sharper. This is not sadness, it is fury born of being lied to, again and again, by those who hold the resources and still choose to hoard them. While press releases and social media campaigns provide sanitised narratives of progress, we will speak the truth. Not in their language, but in our own. We will speak with the voices of the ancestors who remind us that no power is eternal, and no harm is forgotten. We will speak from the ground, where movements are being rebuilt not with donor funds, but with rage and resilience. Operating with impunity In the US, the health secretary may continue to operate with impunity. He may never face formal consequences. But he will not escape the memory of what he has done. The ancestors walk with long shadows. Their justice may not be swift, but it is certain. It arrives in the stories we tell, in the work we continue, in the refusal to be silent or polite in the face of strategic violence. We call his name not to elevate it, but to bind it to the harm he has wrought. Let it echo in the clinics he defunded, in the labs he silenced, and in the histories that will remember him not as a reformer, but as an executioner of global solidarity. We call it so it will tremble every time it is spoken in rooms where he believes he is safe. We call it to remind him, and all those who follow, that power used to destroy will never be protected from memory. We cast our vision beyond Kennedy. We speak to those who will carry this fight long after he is gone. We speak to the young, to the angry, to the brave. To those who still believe that healing is a right, not a reward. To those who understand that justice is not a metaphor. It is, and must be, the standard. We also remember the nameless who bled in silence and those who shouted and were ignored. Because remembering is how we keep the fire burning. Forgetting is how the hateful win. - Tian Johnson is a strategist at the Pan-African health justice non-profit, the African Alliance. *Want to respond to the columnist? Send your letter or article to opinions@ with your name and town or province. You are welcome to also send a profile picture. We encourage a diversity of voices and views in our readers' submissions and reserve the right not to publish any and all submissions received. Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24.
