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In the leafy office park not far from Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, you\u2019ll find them just past the security boom. Dozens of vehicles, leftovers from what were once busy, purposeful operations, sitting under the Highveld sun. Engines dead and tyres flat.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, these brightly painted trucks and trailers emblazoned with Pepfar and USAid logos were on the move \u2014 part of a push to take HIV services to groups of people that government clinics often didn\u2019t reach. But that was before US President Donald Trump abruptly stopped all Pepfar funding<\/a> for HIV and TB projects which reached South Africa through the United States Agency for International Aid, USAid, in February.<\/p>\n The rainy Jozi summer and months of doing nothing have left rust spidering from cracks and leaves piling up on windscreens. Parked in a neat row, vehicles from one such organisation, the Anova Health Institute<\/a>, the nonprofit in South Africa that received the most money from the US government\u2019s Aids fund, Pepfar, have plastic tape strung between them, flapping in the wind like something out of a crime scene. <\/p>\n The parking lot is a metaphor for the crisis that has pitted the government against HIV activists and researchers, who warn we’ve entered another era of denialism, courtesy of the Trump administration. <\/p>\n At a press conference last week,<\/a> Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi gave a public tongue-lashing to the media, activists and researchers, accusing them of making an \u201cAfriForum-style\u201d scene to \u201cspread disinformation\u201d.<\/p>\n But unlike his predecessor, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who denied the link between HIV and Aids and propagated false cures such as beetroot and garlic<\/a>, Motsoaledi is a man of science <\/a>and evidence-based treatment. <\/p>\n In his first round as health minister, between 2009 and 2019<\/a>, he reigned over the roll-out of what has since become the world\u2019s largest HIV treatment programme. And in February, he launched another campaign, <\/a>to find and treat 1.1-million people who know they\u2019re HIV positive but are not on antiretroviral treatment (ART), by December. <\/p>\n But a day after the \u201cClose the Gap\u201d project<\/a> saw the light of day, on February 26, all hell broke loose when the Trump administration pulled its funding for just over half of the US government-funded projects that would have helped the health department to achieve its HIV goals. The rest of the US-funded programmes will probably all end in September, at the end of the American government\u2019s financial year. <\/p>\n Activists warn they\u2019ve since seen a horrifying, fast-paced crisis playing out<\/a> with ever increasing numbers of people skipping their HIV treatment, or not using prevention methods, because NGO clinics have closed. <\/p>\n They say they fear the collapse of the HIV programme they<\/a> \u2014 and the minister \u2014 fought so hard for. <\/p>\n But Motsoaledi says activists are effectively lying because US government funding comprises only 17% of the country\u2019s HIV budget of R46 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to state it clearly that propagating wrong information about the start of the HIV and Aids campaign in South Africa, in the matter that it is being done, is no different from the approach adopted by AfriForum and its ilk which led Trump to trash the whole country,\u201d Motsoaledi, who is attending the World Health Assembly in Geneva this week, lashed out at the media at a press conference on May 15<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI am saying so because we have already been phoned by the funders we have spoken to, who are asking us, why should they put their money in the programme that is said to be collapsing. Is their money going to collapse together with the programme?” <\/p>\n Other than an extra R1 billion from the Global fund for HIV, TB and Malaria, not a cent has been raised <\/a>to replace US funds. <\/p>\n \u201cThe minister is in denial that there\u2019s a crisis at all,\u201d cautions Fatima Hassan, a lawyer who played a crucial part in the early 2000s to force the government to give people with HIV free ARVs, and who now heads the Health Justice Initiative<\/a>. \u201cWe have been here before. No amount of finger pointing will save lives \u2014 only urgency, evidence, partnership, proper planning and resources will.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce again, South Africa will have to deal with the harmful public health consequences of not just the Trump administration, but also our own government\u2019s failure to adequately plan for months now.\u201d <\/p>\n Sex worker<\/strong><\/p>\n Back in the parking lot, known as the Isle of Houghton, the Anova Health Institute\u2019s six mobile clinics are standing idle. <\/p>\n Over the past three years, they\u2019ve been used to test between 4 000 and 6 000 people each month for HIV in Gauteng \u2014 and to put those who tested positive onto ART treatment \u2014 in areas where government clinics are either too far from people\u2019s homes to easily walk to or to reach people, such as teenagers or gay and bisexual men, who might face snickering neighbours or dismissive health workers at state facilities when they ask for condoms or HIV tests. <\/p>\n The US government is allowing Anova to keep only two of its mobile clinics and even those they can\u2019t use because they no longer have money for staff to run them, says one of the institute\u2019s public health specialists, Kate Rees. Since the funding cuts, Anova has had to stop almost all its work helping the government\u2019s district health services to test and treat people for HIV and to hand out anti-HIV pills to prevent infection.<\/p>\n The stop-work order is already being felt in the data \u2014 March 2025 health department figures show that 30% fewer people took up ART in the City of Johannesburg than in March 2024, says Rees. <\/p>\n Johannesburg is one of the 27 health districts where Pepfar funded programmes.<\/a> Among these were 12 clinics, across the 27 districts, with tailor-made HIV services for sex workers, transgender people, men who have sex with men and injecting drug users,<\/a> groups with a much higher chance of getting HIV than the general population<\/a>. <\/p>\n But because of population density, of 63 322 clients these clinics served, 41 996 \u2014 two-thirds \u2014 live in Johannesburg, Motsoaledi explained at the press conference<\/a>. <\/p>\n WATCH THE HEALTH MINISTER\u2019S PRESS CONFERENCE<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"6](\"http:\/\/burn-the-priest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/6-cars_Anova-1000x563-1.png\")
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