#Pepfar

[lorenzobane]

I know there is no end to horrible news we're getting out of the White House these days, and so many people are suffering. But this is really important and so monstrously, horrifically evil that it is making my stomach turn.

They want to defund and eliminate PEPFAR. If you don't know what PEPFAR is, it is a program that funds HIV/AIDS treatment in poor countries. "As of September 30, 2024 , PEPFAR has enabled 7.8 million babies to be born HIV-free to mothers living with HIV. The program has also provided critical care and support for 6.6 million orphans, vulnerable children, and their caregivers so they can survive and thrive."

This was actually a program started by GWB and was literally the only good thing he ever did. And it has helped so many people. This is just. Beyond evil. Beyond cruel. Even if they have the medicine from PEPFAR at clinics, they're not allowed to distribute it.

They've already paused it. Doctors are worried that it will create a new treatment-resistant form of HIV because it'll be pausing treatment for so many people.

This program has saved 26 MILLION lives.

It has such a tiny, tiny part of the budget. Them cutting this program will do nothing to balance the budget. There is no logical reason for this except abject cruelty. Please, please, please call your lawmakers- especially if you have Republican Senators and House members. Remind them that this was a program created by a Republican president.

I don't even know. I just. We can't just let it die in darkness. At the very least, spread the word. Talk to your normie friends about this. Talk to your non-political friends and ask them if they think a program that makes up less than 1% of the budget should be cut if it has saved MILLIONS of lives. We may fail but we shouldn't let it die without a fight.

Here is a link to find your House member: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

And your Senator: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Abby Monteil at Them:

The Trump administration is poised to remove all members of the 30-year-old Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Two anonymous sources “familiar with the matter” confirmed the council members’ removal to Reuters. According to an archived version of the council’s website, PACHA had over 30 members before Donald Trump’s second presidential term began. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed to Reuters that PACHA will “continue to provide advice, information, and recommendations” to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. However, he did not provide additional details about when new members might be appointed. Per PACHA’s official website, the council’s members offer advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Director of the White House Office of National AIDS policy regarding HIV and AIDS “diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and quality services.” Appointed by the Secretary, members serve for overlapping terms of up to four years. The council was formed in 1995 under President Bill Clinton. News of PACHA members’ dismissal comes less than two weeks after Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent “reduction-in-force” (RIF) notices dismissing an estimated 10,000 employees within the Department of Health and Human Services beginning April 1. [...] The second Trump administration has spent its first months gutting vital HIV and AIDS aid, including attacks on US-funded aid abroad and HIV research grants. In February, the administration slashed tens of billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, including the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR). According to a new analysis published in the medical journal The Lancet on April 8, if PEPFAR programs are not restored, “[a]n additional 1 million children will become infected with HIV, 0.5 million additional children will die of AIDS, and 2.8 million children will additionally become orphaned by AIDS” throughout Africa by 2030.

The Trump Administration keeps embarrassing themselves as usual… this time by removing all members from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

See Also:

The Advocate: Trump quietly purges presidential HIV advisory council, sparking public health fears (exclusive)

[another-normal-anomaly]

Meet Me In DC

https://pepfarreport.org/event

attempt at viral FB post/instagram captuon to go with the images, free to share:when I was a kid there was a popular kind of post circulating on the internet that went, if you don't share this post with five of your friends right now, a child will DIE. And everyone knew that it was stupid, that it wasn't real, but I think a lot of us shared them anyway, because, you know, better safe than sorry. well, this one's real.the US government program PEPFAR prevents 1,400 babies from being born infected with HIV every DAY. Right now most of its grants are on hold and most of its clinics shuttered, because of the State Department freeze on global aid. The freeze was meant to exclude lifesaving aid. It was meant to exclude PEPFAR. But the clinics are still closed, because the government is moving too fast and too carelessly to keep our most crucial global programs functioning. When a group of independent journalists, economists and policy experts got together to estimate the lives saved by PEPFAR - and the lives that will be lost if it stays shut down - we estimated 1 million more people will die every year. What would you do to stop a million people from dying? Would you forward this to five friends? Would you show up at our rally on Friday, March 7th at 12pm at the Foggy Bottom Metro Station in DC? Would you call your Congressman?If you would do any of those things to stop a million people from dying, you should do them right now. See you Friday.

https://pepfarreport.org/event

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Associated Press (AP):

Years of American-led investment into AIDS programs has reduced the number of people killed by the disease to the lowest levels seen in more than three decades and provided life-saving medicines for some of the world’s most vulnerable.

But in the last six months, the sudden withdrawal of U.S. money has caused a “systemic shock,” U.N. officials warned, adding that if the funding isn’t replaced, it could lead to more than 4 million AIDS-related deaths and 6 million more HIV infections by 2029.

A new UNAIDS report released Thursday said the funding losses have “already destabilized supply chains, led to the closure of health facilities, left thousands of health clinics without staff, set back prevention programs, disrupted HIV testing efforts and forced many community organizations to reduce or halt their HIV activities.”

It also said that it feared other major donors scaled back their support, reversing decades of progress against AIDS worldwide — and that the strong multilateral cooperation is in jeopardy because of wars, geopolitical shifts and climate change.

The $4 billion that the United States pledged for the global HIV response for 2025 disappeared virtually overnight in January, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered that all foreign aid be suspended and later moved to shutter the U.S. AID agency.

Andrew Hill, an HIV expert at the University of Liverpool who is not connected to the United Nations, said that while Trump is entitled to spend U.S. money as he sees fit, “any responsible government would have given advance warning so countries could plan,” instead of stranding patients in Africa where clinics were closed overnight.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was launched in 2003 by U.S. President George W. Bush, the biggest-ever commitment by any country focused on a single disease.

UNAIDS called the program a “lifeline” for countries with high HIV rates, and said that it supported testing for 84.1 million people, treatment for 20.6 million, among other initiatives. According to data from Nigeria, PEPFAR also funded 99.9% of the country’s budget for medicines taken to prevent HIV.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Angeli Achrekar, a UNAIDS deputy executive director who was PEPFAR’s principal deputy coordinator until January 2023, said the program is under review by the Trump administration though Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver “to continue life-saving treatment.”

““The extent to which it will continue in the future, we don’t know,” she told a video news conference with U.N. reporters in New York. “We are cautiously hopeful that PEPFAR will continue to support both prevention and treatment services.”

[derseprinceoftbd]

A friendly reminder that the joint Worm Fandom+Rationalism movement has killed over 38,615 people, exactly one of whom was a landlord. This is genuinely the most evil force in the world today. A dangerous cult movement is rapidly gaining control of both American youth culture and the U.S. government.

[proleposting]

[alyfoxxxen]

Republicans Scrap Cuts to PEPFAR Anti-AIDS Program Trump Wanted | TIME

[immortalnetizen]

90,000,000 Lives for $20

[violetfaust]

This is a good one to add to your calls to your representatives. PEPFAR is the program that provides HIV treatment antivirals throughout the world, including to pregnant people to prevent their babies being born with HIV. it was among the USAID programs cruelly destroyed by Felonious Musk, and while it received a waiver and SHOULD be back in action, according to this article it’s still not functioning. Which will lead to about a million deaths per year from treatable causes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gideon Taaffe at MMFA:

Right-wing media are focused on culture war battles as the Trump administration suspends lifesaving work from the U.S. Agency for International Development, cherry-picking USAID programs to dismiss the agency as “woke,” “radical,” and “overwhelmingly hard left.” In reality, USAID is responsible for providing health care and nutritional aid to thousands of the world’s vulnerable people, many living in war-torn regions.

The Trump administration has sought to put a halt to USAID’s operations

On February 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID was now under the direct authority of the State Department, and the administration froze U.S. foreign aid. Rubio placed Pete Marocco in charge of USAID; he served in the agency during Trump’s first term and has been accused of attempting to dismantle it during his tenure. [CNN, 2/3/25]

Following Rubio’s takeover, 10,000 USAID employees were placed on administrative leave, and a couple days later the Trump administration announced plans to leave fewer than 300 workers in place to carry out the organization’s work. A judge put a temporary pause on some of the Trump administration’s job cutting, resulting in 2,200 employees being reinstated but with uncertain futures at the agency. [USA Today, 2/4/25; The Associated Press, 2/6/25; NBC News, 2/7/25]

USAID workers in high-risk locations have reported being cut off from communication and were left unsure of how to access evacuation protocols. Employees of USAID are also facing interruptions to medical care and housing insecurity. [Kyle Cheney, Bluesky, 2/7/25]

Rubio claimed he had issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, but workers on the ground have said that operations have come to a halt. While some programs have been granted a waiver to continue under Rubio, many have lost access to supplies, and payments to contractors that are covered by the waiver have not come through. That has affected emergency food aid in Ethiopia, a refugee camp in Syria, a resettlement program for victims of the Islamic State group, and more. One USAID worker told CNN, “That work is grounded to a halt because there’s no staff to manage it, and there’s no staff in DC to answer questions from partners.” [The Washington Post, 2/10/25; CNN, 2/8/25]

Right-wing media distort the USAID’s mission, falsely brand it as “woke.”

[mountainslesbian]

HIV/AIDS Activists stacked more than 200 coffins in front of the State Department Thursday April 17, 2025 to protest the devastation of global HIV-fighting programs by Donald Trump’s administration.

Due to PEPFAR funding cuts 20million people globally will lose access to HIV treatment (220,000 people per day including 7000 children/day). PEPFAR also supports >90% of global PrEP treatments. Some estimates put deaths due to the funding cuts will be at 100,000 or more from AIDS related causes in the first 3months following funding cancellation.

If PEPFAR funding cuts are not reversed an estimated 8.7 million preventable new infections will occur by 2029, and result in 6.3 million AIDS deaths, and 3.4million AIDS orphans.

[derseprinceoftbd]

I'd like to point out that the Worm Fandom is now categorically more evil than Leopold II, 2nd King Of The Belgians. In terms of individual human beings, if the Worm Fandom were classified as an individual, they would only be below Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Hong Xiuquan, Genghis Khan, and, if counted, Christopher Columbus and Gavrilo Princip. They dwarf Pol Pot, all Kims of NK combined, any Russian Tsar, Tamerlane, every side of the Iraq War, Winston Churchill, Yahya Khan, and Ismail Enver Pasha.

[newsinfocus]

[gottagottabedown]

@sesquipedalian-thaumaturge