Nearly 15,000 people - including more than 1,500 children - are estimated to have died already because of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s savage cuts to USAID, according to an advocacy program tracker.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the global health program funded by USAID that includes HIV treatment, testing and prevention drug distribution, has saved more than 25 million lives since it began in 2003 under former President George W. Bush.
A tracker compiled by the HIV Modeling Consortium – a network of epidemiologists, modelers, health economists and policymakers – charts the impact of the Trump administration’s freeze on funding for the AIDS’ program.
As of January 24, an estimated 14,872 adults and 1,582 children will have died as a result of the funding freeze, according to the model.
“The suspension impacts 222,000 people receiving daily HIV medication, 224,000 HIV tests performed daily, and essential services for vulnerable populations,” the tracker’s website says. “The suspension affects 190,000 healthcare workers involved in global HIV response efforts. This page estimates impact in infant and adult deaths caused by this suspension of the PEPFAR Program to date.”
The State Department stepped in after AIDS program’s funding was frozen for 90 days and issued a waiver that would allow funds to reach its life-saving HIV programs. But several statements filed earlier this week said that invoices relating to the funds had not been paid, the New York Times reported.
The State Department did not respond when contacted by The Independent for comment.
HIV advocacy groups have been horrified at the breakneck speed at which the administration has moved, dismantling 20 years of progress in less than a month.
“The speed, scale and inhumanity of the new U.S. administration is staggering,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of the PEPFAR-funded advocacy group AVAC, based in New York, told The Independent.
“PEPFAR and global health programs do not work with “on/off” switches,” Warren said. “They take time to build and vision and strategy to transition and sustain impact. That has been destroyed, for no good reason.”
The impact, Warren said, has been “unnecessarily destructive.” Clinics where the group and its global partners work have been shuttered, with life-saving treatment and prevention programs stopped overnight.
“Trust and confidence of patients, partners and governments gone,” Warren said. “All in a month. Building infrastructure takes years. Destroying it, we now know, takes just weeks.”
The Trump administration was handed another victory after the Supreme Court’s chief justice ruled this week that the Trump administration did not need to immediately pay for the $1.5 billion in already completed aid work. It followed a federal judge’s ruling that ordered the administration to release the money.
The program’s investments have helped curb the HIV epidemic around the world while also reducing the threat of global disease outbreaks.
Aid organizations are now in uncharted territory and warned of an impending public health emergency.
“The administration is ignoring the judicial and legislative branches, which for almost 250 years have been co-equal arms of government,” Warren said. “Given the last month of intentional lies, chaos and confusion, it is not hyperbole to say we have a public health emergency; a diplomatic disaster; and a constitutional crisis – and this after just one month of a four-year presidential term.”
Save the Children also lamented the aid cuts from the U.S. and the world, calling it “a dark and difficult moment.”
“This withdrawal of support will have a direct and deadly impact on some of the world’s most vulnerable children,” CEO Inger Ashing said in a statement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously showed his support for the AIDS program.
“It’s a program we want to continue,” Rubio said on February 10. “Obviously, we’re going to have questions about it. Look, if PEPFAR is working well, it’s a program that should be getting smaller over time, not bigger. Because you’re preventing HIV, you’re preventing the spread of HIV, and so people aren’t testing positive because their viral load gets down, they’re not passing it on to their children.”
