US President Donald Trump has put almost all US foreign aid on hold.
If the US frozen funds are not recovered or exchanged, there could be a 10-fold increase in millions and perhaps millions of people coming in the future, with 2,000 new HIV infections per day worldwide, with associated deaths.
US President Donald Trump took almost all foreign aid to the US on January 20th. A few days later, the US State Department said life-saving HIV work will continue under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
But disruptions on health funding and wider impacts on services have had devastating effects on those living with HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS executive director Winnie told reporters in Geneva on Monday.
“This sudden withdrawal of US funding has shut down many clinics and fired thousands of healthcare workers. All of this means we expect new infections to rise. UNAIDS estimates we can see 2,000 new infections every day,” she said.
She added that if funds from the U.S. International Development Agency (USAID) were not reopened at the end of the 90-day suspension in April, or replaced by another government, “we will have an additional 6.3 million AIDS deaths over the next four years.”
“We’ll see it coming back and we’ll see people die the way we saw them in the 90s and 2000s,” she said.
Byanyima said the numbers were based on UN modeling, but did not provide details on how they reached the estimates.
According to the latest data, there were 600,000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide in 2023.
UNAIDS, which coordinates the global response to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, received $50 million in core funding last year from the United States, which accounts for 35% of the US budget.
The Trump administration said funds were frozen to ensure they were in line with the president’s “America First” policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed concerns that Washington is ending foreign aid, saying that Washington was offering exemptions for lifesaving services.
Trump’s team members say they saved hundreds of billions of dollars to US taxpayers through a swift fire move to cancel contracts, fire workers, and government fraud and waste, but little evidence has been provided to support that claim.
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