The implications are dire for Africa, as many nations on the continent heavily depend on aid to run health projects.

About 27% of all US funding through the WHO for the African region goes to polio eradication, 20% supports improved access to quality essential health services, and much of the balance goes to pandemic preparedness and response.

While speaking on Channel Africa's Rise and Shine, the Co-Founder of Treatment Action Campaign and Section 27 in SA, Mark Heywood says,” The move has serious implications for Africa, where many nations rely heavily on aid to support their health initiatives.

Approximately 27% of US funding through the WHO for Africa goes towards polio eradication. 20% improves access to essential health services, and much of the remainder supports pandemic preparedness and response.

“Health interventions all over the world in developing policy and guidelines, in monitoring disease, in mobilising  resources for emerging diseases and epidemics.”

And you know, as your listeners know, we're in a time in history where we face unprecedented threats from disease, from new epidemics becoming pandemics, from non-communicable diseases.

So we've really never needed a WHO more than we need it at the moment, and we need a well funded WHO. So, so this is a, is really a critical blow. It's sabotage.

it's a violation, a deliberate violation, and undermining of a 75 year old international system. You know what it means for Africa translates, for example, into some of the biggest disease threats that we face on this continent.

The president has also cut funding through United States Agency for International Development  (USAID) through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program.

And there are millions of people in Africa, including in SA, obviously where I am, who are dependent on that funding for access to their medicines for access to healthcare workers, so there's a very direct and dangerous threat to one of the biggest disease challenges that has faced the world in the last 50 years, which is the HIV epidemic.

Remember, HIV has killed 35 million people since it was first discovered. We have managed to make great progress in the last 20 years, but this could seriously threaten that progress.

So I don't think you can understate the damage and the danger this this represents. Well, the consequences are immediate, you know.

Organisations in SA and across Africa two days ago received orders to cease work, literally to seize work, doctors to seize work because the funding has been blocked and has been stopped.

Here in Johannesburg at Wits University, over 2 000 doctors who are seconded to uh health departments have been told to cease work.

Where I am as a member of the Treatment Action Campaign, the Treatment Action Campaign runs a really important program called Community-led monitoring where they constantly survey the quality of services at clinics.

That program, which is funded by Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and by PEPFAR, has also just come under an order to cease work.

It is something that is happening now and that is beginning to harm people immediately.

I guess people might say um it's time for the other countries to step up. President Trump was comparing the US's contribution to China's, for example, and they're both superpowers in terms of economies and resources.

Perhaps some might even say China's got more cash in the bank. Is this a moment for the international community to look at themselves and say yes, whilst we point a finger at the US, we too need to step up.

Yeah, but I think you must delink the issues. You can't make that point as the president of America by sacrificing people's lives and risking breaking the system.

There's no doubt that all other countries need to step up. Every country in the world underfunds its healthcare systems. There are, you know, even with HIV there's been big problems with the defunding of HIV.

Our own governments in Africa underspend and are unduly dependent on foreign funding for healthcare systems. Those are issues that we, we, we must address.

The system the international funding system for health has been distorted for a long time, but, but this is not the way to do it.

The way to do it is not by endangering the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable who are often the victims of their own governments anyway because their governments actually don't really care about the lives and health of poor people, which is why they underfund health systems in the first place.

And that was going to be my next question is that uh we have to look at ourselves as well, surely, that our politicians have to take healthcare more seriously.

Yes, we do. You know, health is one of the biggest threats locally, nationally, globally to people's dignity, to people's lives. It's a huge threat to economies as we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic. It should be taken far, far more seriously, you know, we're busy and this also will be impacted by American, by Trump.

You know, there's negotiations at the moment going on around a new international pandemic treaty which tries to make sure that the errors and mistakes and omissions that were made with COVID-19 are not repeated with future pandemics.

That is, that is under threat as well. So you know, health activism, prioritizing health, looking at our own health care systems again is crucial at this moment.

I'm wondering if the US has actually thought this through, because when you think about pandemic preparedness.

What we saw with COVID-19, um, they too became a victim of something that started in another part of the world and so

if they say we're not going to help you prepare yourselves, they're actually making themselves vulnerable.

They certainly are making themselves vulnerable and this is why Trump, the Trump administration doesn't actually, it, it reveals its own ignorance, frankly, of health and the world we live in.

I'll give you an example, which is actually emanating from America at the at at the moment.

You know, scientists, epidemiologists over the last few months have been watching very closely.

A bird flu epidemic in America.

It, it's a virus which is called H5N1. That virus has already uh infected humans and has caused a very small number of deaths.

But nonetheless, it's, it's, it's serious. I read an article in the New York Times saying that, you know, that virus is one mutation away from becoming a very, very serious threat to humans, but Trump has ordered the seizing of all scientific meetings to do with health.

In the US, he has ordered that there should be no public statements made about health by the National Institute for Health or the CDC over the next few months.

So you know this type of behavior is absolutely reckless. In Africa we have had outbreaks of Marburg virus, new outbreaks of Ebola. We continue to have, you know, COVID-19.

Across the continent, all of these jumps very, very quickly in our modern world from community to community and country to country, so it's reckless and yes, the United States or the people of the US will pay a heavy price for this recklessness.

All right, so I guess a bit of good news, Donald Trump's administration's freeze, for AIDS, particularly HIV PEPFAR has uh been paused. We don't know for how long, my fear is long term.

We saw we were making progress with HIV and AIDS. COVID came and that changed the game.

This one decision, could that also have a similar effect in terms of reversing gains and starting literally steps back from where we, where we where we are?

Yes, it could. That that is again, it's not a theoretical possibility. It's a real possibility, and I'm sorry, Peter, to be the bearer of bad news, but yes, that's a slight improvement as you've just mentioned, that announcement that some of the

AIDS programs will be spared from these funding cuts, but that statement, that so-called waiver is very unclear.

And it's also couched in other conditions, so you can maybe fund HIV, but you can't fund anything to do with termination of pregnancy.

You can't fund anything to do with family planning. You can't fund anything to do with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex community, etc. So what we have at the moment is a lot of confusion, a lot of uncertainty, and that is already doing damage to programs.

You know, a big program like the HIV program in SA, there's 5.8 million people on antiretroviral treatment through the public health system in Africa.

There are millions across Africa there are millions more. It's a fragile system, you know, and you have to monitor it, maintain it all of the time.

You don't deliberately mess with fragile health systems.

--ChannelAfrica--