(10 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Johannesburg, South Africa – 29 January 2025
1. Close of clinic signage
2. Close of closure notice placed outside the clinic
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kampala, Uganda – 10 February 2025
++VIA VIDEO CALL++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director:
"If this piece, this contribution by the American government through PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and through Global Fund is pulled out, stops, our estimate is that in the next five years, we could have 6.3 million AIDS related deaths. Ten times more. This will cost lives, if the American government doesn’t change its mind and maintain its leadership. People are going to die because life saving tools have been taken away from them and from what I have heard, I have not yet heard of any European country committing to step in but I know that they are listening and trying to see where can they come in because they care about rights, about humanity."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Pretoria, South Africa – 23 July 2024
4. Wide of people seated in a clinic waiting to receive medical care
5. Various of mothers with their children at a clinic
STORYLINE:
The head of the United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) said on Monday the number of new HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS program is dropped.
In an interview with The Associated Press, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections have been falling in recent years with just 1.3 million new cases recorded in 2023, a 60% decline since the virus peaked in 1995.
She also warned millions of people could die and more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.
Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would freeze all foreign assistance for 90 days, Byanyima said officials estimate that by 2029, there could be 8.7 million people newly infected with HIV, 6.3 million AIDS-related deaths and an additional 3.4 million children made orphans.
“We will see a surge in this disease,” Byanyima said, speaking from Uganda.
“This will cost lives if the American government doesn’t change its mind and maintain its leadership,” she said, adding that it was not her place to criticize any government’s policy.
In one Kenyan county, she said 550 HIV workers were immediately laid off, while thousands of others in Ethiopia were terminated, leaving health officials unable to track the epidemic.
She noted that the loss of U.S. funding to HIV programs in some countries was catastrophic, with external funding accounting for about 90% of their programs.
Nearly $400 million goes to countries like Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania, she said.
Byanyima also said the loss of American support in efforts to combat HIV was coming at another critical time, with the arrival of what she called “a magical prevention tool” known as lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that was shown to offer complete protection against HIV in women, and which worked nearly as well as men.
Widespread use of that shot, in addition to other interventions to stop HIV, could help end the disease as a public health problem in the next five years, Byanyima said.
Byanyima added that so far, no other countries or donors have stepped up to fill the void that will be left by the loss of American aid, but that she plans to visit numerous European capitals to speak with global leaders.
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