US President Donald Trump has stopped the financial support for HIV treatment in Nigeria and other developing countries.
The decision orders the US State Department to stop disbursing funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for a three-month period.
The exceptions to this new order are emergency humanitarian assistance and military financing for Israel and Egypt.
This comes after Trump’s executive order on foreign aid, signed on his first day in the Oval Office on Monday, January 20.
PEPFAR is a program for HIV treatment in Africa and developing countries that was created by former President George W. Bush in 2003 to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS and save lives.
However, Trump has ordered all US government agencies managing foreign development assistance programs to halt the disbursement of funds.
Speaking on this development, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said, “The United States is no longer going to blindly dole out money with no return for the American people.”
According to NPR, PEPFAR would likely suspend operations for at least three months, sending shockwaves through the global health community.
The AIDS relief program has an annual budget of $6.5 billion and aids to deliver HIV/AIDS treatment to more than 20.6 million people.
Fact sheet from the US State Department showed that PEPFAR has saved the lives of an estimated 26 million people since its inception.
