South Africa’s HIV/AIDS clinics scramble over U.S. aid freeze

South Africa is one of the largest recipients of funds from the U.S. HIV/AIDS response programme called PEPFAR, a project launched in 2003 and now paused by the funding freeze. PEPFAR accounts for 17% of the country’s HIV budget, ensuring some 5.5 million people receive anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, according to the health ministry.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The gates at a Johannesburg LGBTQ clinic called OUT have been closed for more than a week and HIV prevention and treatment services suspended for its 6,000 clients.

The lights are also off at the University of the Witwatersrand’s HIV project, a leader in the provision of services to sex workers in South Africa. a country with one of the largest HIV-positive populations in the world.

Around 14% of South Africans, around 8.45 million people, were HIV positive in 2022, according to government statistics.

They are among the several South African HIV/AIDS healthcare providers that have been confused, angry, and scrambling for survival since U.S. President Donald Trump issued a 90-day freeze last week on Washington’s foreign aid.

Volatile system

South Africa is one of the largest recipients of funds from the U.S. HIV/AIDS response programme called PEPFAR, a project launched in 2003 and now paused by the funding freeze.

PEPFAR accounts for 17% of the country’s HIV budget, ensuring some 5.5 million people receive anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, according to the Health Ministry.

“The U.S. is a totally unreliable partner,” said Dawie Nel, the director at OUT, whose Engage Men’s Health clinic in Johannesburg has a note fixed to the gate that announces it is “temporarily closed”. “The system is very volatile and chaotic.”

OUT’s services identify around four to five cases of HIV a day along with other sexually transmitted diseases, he said.

“The PEPFAR-fund freeze will take South Africa and the world back in terms of the gains we have made in our response to HIV,” the Treatment Action Campaign’s Anele Yawa said in a statement.

“People are going to be left behind in terms of prevention, treatment and care.”