Millions of lives at risk as Trump halts HIV funding for Nigeria
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The US government has halted the support for HIV treatment in Nigeria and other developing countries following an order by President Donald Trump.
The US State Department stopped the disbursement of funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a programme for HIV treatment in Africa and developing countries, for at least 90 days.
The action originates from President Trump’s executive order on foreign aid, which he signed on his first day in office.
The order instructed all government agencies managing foreign development assistance programmes to halt the disbursement of funds.
The funding freeze puts millions of people, including Nigerian HIV patients, at immediate risk, with fears of treatment disruption and possible deterioration of the health of people with the virus.
The PEPFAR, established in 2003 under former President George W. Bush, provides antiretroviral therapy (ART) for over 20.6 million people worldwide. Its interventions also help to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and have saved an estimated 26 million lives.
The US State Department fact sheet showed that PEPFAR has saved the lives of an estimated 26 million people since its inception.
But speaking on the ban, the agency was quoted as saying, “The United States is no longer going to blindly dole out money with no return for the American people,”
However, public health experts fear the new Trump administration might terminate the entire programme.
Some others hoped that Marco Rubio’s appointment as Secretary of State could signal positive news for PEPFAR, given his past support for the initiative.
Nigeria bears the heaviest HIV burden in Sub-Saharan Africa, with over about two million people living with HIV in the country. In 2020 alone, AIDS-related deaths in Nigeria were estimated at approximately 49,000 across all age groups.
The National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Nigeria’s contribution to HIV fight is less than 20 per cent of its required funding.
According to the World Health Organization, WHO, an estimated 39.9 million people lived with HIV at the end of 2023.
The agency noted that 65 per cent of these people were in the WHO African Region. In the same year, about 630,000 people died from HIV-related causes and an estimated 1.3 million people acquired the virus.
While there is no cure for HIV infection, access to effective HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care, including for opportunistic infections, has made HIV infection a manageable chronic health condition and enabled people living with HIV to lead long and healthy lives.
living with HIV to lead long and healthy lives.
The funding freeze stemmed from an executive order signed by Trump on January 20, 2025, directing a review of all foreign aid programmes to align with his “America First” policy.
According to a report the State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, stated that “Consistent with President Trump’s executive order on reevaluating and realigning United States foreign aid, Secretary Marco Rubio has paused all U.S. foreign assistance funded by or through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for review.”
He added that Trump “is initiating a review of all foreign assistance programmes to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
According to NPR, while PEPFAR, funded solely by the U.S. government with a $6.5 billion annual budget, was not specifically mentioned in the announcement, a source at USAID confirmed that the stop-work order applies “100 per cent to PEPFAR.”