Health Department consults NGOs on urgent solutions to PEPFAR funding cuts

THE national health department will this week consult with NGOs affected by the termination of the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) grant funding on how to mitigate the impact and find a long lasting solution. 

Pepfar-funded HIV organisations receiving grants from the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, received letters on Thursday alerting them that their grants have been terminated.

Since Pepfar’s inception in 2003, the US government has invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, saving over 25 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and supporting several countries to achieve HIV epidemic control, all while significantly strengthening global health and economic security.

Department of Health spokesperson, Foster Mohale, said: “The Department of Health will this week conduct stakeholder engagement or consultation with the affected NGOs to discuss how to mitigate the impact of funding cuts as part of the process to find a long lasting solution.”

Desmond Tutu Health Foundation CEO, Linda-Gail Bekker, said the termination order delivered a major blow to the country’s HIV response. 

She explained that some of the work done by Pepfar includes supporting health systems, looking for individuals who haven’t yet been tested and linked to ARV care.

Some of the support has also gone to data-collection, data management, and “other ways that the health system has been strengthened to cope with having the largest HIV treatment programme in the world, and the biggest HIV epidemic of any country in the world”.

“We don’t yet have a full understanding of what the gaps would be, but this is an important time for rapid assessment in collaboration with the department of health, really to understand what those gaps would be, and how we can in the short-term fill them, and then in the long term, make sure that our response remains on track, as we have been doing, to reach some UNAIDS goal by 2030.”

At Cape Town Pride Mardi Gras and Parade on Saturday, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Dr Dion George said the first casualty of the new US government was Pepfar. “Our (LGBTQIA+) community has survived two pandemics in my lifetime – AIDS and COVID.

“AIDS took a lot longer to grip the attention of the world and for medication to be developed, because it was associated with people like us and nobody cared enough until it was not just us.

“The DA-run Western Cape Government Department of Health and Wellness has ensured that the purchase of antiretroviral treatment and clinical staff are mainly funded through the Province’s own budget,” George said.

“Anyone who accessed this care in the Western Cape from non-profit organisations that are now closed, can access medication and care from the nearest primary health care facility, and specific clinical needs can be referred within the Western Cape health care system.”

South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) spokesperson Newton Masuku condemned the Trump administration’s decision, saying it was a blatant act of political retaliation against the SA government's unwavering support for Palestine.

“The Pepfar funding cut is part of a wider pattern of economic coercion. The US and its allies have long used financial pressure to punish governments that refuse to be complicit in their imperialist agenda.

“Just as the U.S. imposes sanctions on countries that stand against its wars, it is now withdrawing life-saving health funding from South Africa because our government refuses to turn a blind eye to genocide,” Masuku said.

Masuku said that the Pepfar cuts are deep and wide, and regardless of foreign policy are also affecting Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Lesotho, Eswatini-Swaziland and Zimbabwe, as well as UNAIDS.

Cape Times