US cuts to health funding threaten lives of 830,000 people, report says

A funding gap is putting at risk progress in beating the Aids epidemic – and it is likely to widen under US president Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to global health projects.

If adopted by congress, next year’s budget could deprive about 830,000 people, mostly in Africa, of access to life-saving Aids drugs, said the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy charity in California.

“We will see lives needlessly being lost,” said Linda-Gail Bekker, president of the International Aids Society, which was hosting about 6,000 experts in Paris for a conference that started yesterday.

“We’re not talking about maybe a slowing down.

“If these cuts come about we could very well see a real turnaround in terms of the progress that has been made.”

A Trump budget could result in nearly 200,000 new HIV infections, the foundation said. It could also leave as many as 25 million couples without access to sponsored contraceptives.

“I cannot tell you how anxious I feel. To have the funding carpet taken from under our feet just seems such an incredible travesty,” Ms Bekker said.

The US has for years been the biggest contributor to the global fight against HIV, providing about two thirds of funding by governments.

Last year, it contributed US$4.9 billion (Dh18bn) to global HIV projects – 7.5 times the amount provided by the next biggest donor, Britain.

Mr Trump’s proposed budget, submitted in May, would reduce this amount by about $1bn, according to Health Global Access Project.

The US president put forward a blueprint which, in its own words, “reduces funding for several global health programmes, including HIV/Aids, with the expectation that other donors can and should increase their commitments”.

The draft budget proposes to “maintain current commitments and all current patient levels on HIV/Aids treatment” under the president’s emergency plan for Aids relief, set up by George W Bush in 2003.

The programme provides anti-retroviral treatment to more than 12 million people.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US government’s national institute of allergy and infectious diseases, said the goal of the programme was “to get more people who have been newly infected on therapy”.

“If you don’t increase funding you have more responsibilities that you are not able to meet,” Mr Fauci said.

“The outlook of funding for HIV remains uncertain given proposed cuts to HIV funding by the US,” the report said.

Since the epidemic began in the 1980s, 76.1 million people have been infected with HIV and about 35 million have died.

Last year, Aids killed a million people and infected another 1.8 million, the UN said.

And while infections and deaths are decreasing, the number of people living with HIV, which requires lifelong treatment, continues to grow.

Last year, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people who needed anti-retroviral treatment had access to it.

By 2020, the UN is aiming for 90 per cent of HIV-infected people to be on medication. But to achieve this, annual spending must reach $26.2bn.

Last year, funders were able to raise $19.1bn for Aids research, prevention and treatment programmes in poor and middleincome countries.

“We are maximising the use of every dollar available, but we are still $7bn short,” Unaids executive director Michel Sidibe said this week.

Organisers of the International Aids Society conference said that “all of the scientific challenges still before us are threatened by a weakening resolve to fund HIV science”.

“It is a difficult moment for all of us,” said French HIV expert Jean-Francois Delfraissy, co-chairman of the Paris meeting.

He blamed a “modification in funding in the US” and a shift in “the political vision of the US government”.

The US has for years been the biggest contributor to the global fight against HIV, providing two thirds of funding by governments