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BL Premium reports that the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid has put more than 15,300 healthcare workers’ jobs on the line, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told parliament on Wednesday.
The personnel affected include doctors, nurses, pharmacists, data capturers and technical experts, most of whom work in the health districts hardest hit by HIV/Aids. Just hours after his inauguration on 20 January, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing all foreign aid for 90 days pending a review to determine whether it aligned with his “America First” foreign policy agenda. This was swiftly followed by a stop-work order that forced HIV/Aids programmes supported by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) in more than 50 countries to come to a grinding halt. A partial waiver to Trump’s instruction was subsequently signed by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, but since Wednesday NGOs supported by Pepfar in SA had yet to receive the go-ahead to resume any of their activities. Briefing MPs, Motsoaledi minister gave the assurance that SA’s supplies of antiretroviral medicines were not threatened by the aid freeze. The government covered 90% of the cost of HIV treatment, with the remainder provided by the Global Fund to fight HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, he indicated. Work was under way to assess the effect of the aid freeze on services in the 27 health districts in which Pepfar-supported organisations operated, and provinces were working on short- and long-term contingency plans, Motsoaledi advised.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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