Previously unpublished data has shown that the testing and monitoring of HIV patients has dropped in South Africa, which has the world's highest HIV burden, since aid cuts carried out by U.S. President Donald Trump. - REUTERS
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00:01The testing and monitoring of HIV patients in South Africa has significantly fallen.
00:06Previously unpublished government data has shown.
00:09That's since, and according to four HIV experts, appears to be because of,
00:14a U.S. cut-in aid that funded health workers and clinics.
00:18Wow, people are going to die. Really, people are going to die.
00:23That's Sophie Mowatze, an HIV activist and community leader in the Johannesburg township of Diepsloot.
00:30South Africa has the world's highest burden of HIV.
00:34Around 8 million people, or one in five adults, live with the virus.
00:40But Mowatze said it can be hard to get HIV patients to seek care because of stigma.
00:45The U.S. was funding 17% of South Africa's HIV budget before President Donald Trump's cuts.
00:54That paid for resources like, for example, the salaries of 15,000 healthcare workers
00:59under the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
01:04Those healthcare workers carried out tests and counselling and followed up with patients.
01:09PEPFAR funding also supported NGO-run clinics, which have now closed.
01:14Having frozen many foreign aid programs, Trump has reinstated some life-saving assistance,
01:20including parts of PEPFAR.
01:22But he's also targeted South Africa specifically,
01:25cutting all funding to the country via an executive order in February.
01:31In the last two months, according to data from South Africa's National Health Laboratory Service,
01:36viral load testing has fallen.
01:39It measures how much of the virus is in the blood of people living with HIV,
01:43who are on antiretroviral treatment.
01:46That checks if treatment is working and if the virus is sufficiently suppressed
01:50to prevent it from spreading to others.
01:53The data showed viral load testing is down more than 21% for pregnant women,
01:58while early infant diagnostic testing has dropped almost 20%.
02:02Here's epidemiologist Devorah Joseph-Davy.
02:06All of this testing is not getting done.
02:09We don't know what level of virus pregnant women have.
02:13We don't know how many infants are acquiring HIV.
02:16And unfortunately, all of these people are the most vulnerable in our society here.
02:22And so pregnant women and infants are at extreme risk of HIV infection,
02:28HIV transmission, without PEPFAR and governments of South Africa support.
02:32Amid Trump's America First agenda, the long-term future of HIV-related U.S. assistance
02:38in South Africa, and indeed the rest of the world, remains unclear.
02:43The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
02:48A spokesperson for South Africa's Department of Health,
02:50given a summary of the testing data, said more analysis was needed.
02:55He added that South Africa already had challenges with patient retention
02:58and viral load testing before the aid cuts.
03:02However, HIV experts have been saying for months
03:04that the health ministry has been downplaying the impact of the funding loss.
03:08A drop in testing figures could be an early warning sign, they added,
03:12followed by a rise in new cases and deaths.