The Trump administration has released new data on the country’s HIV/AIDS work abroad. It is being claimed that the numbers are good news, but many HIV experts say they paint a worrying picture.
Leila Fadel, host:
The State Department has new data on America’s work on HIV/AIDS around the world. The department says the data shows things are working well. But as NPR’s Gabriel Emanuel reports, HIV experts dispute that funding cuts could help the virus spread.
GABRIEL EMANUEL, BYLINE: PEPFAR, or the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has been lauded for saving more than 26 million lives since it was launched by President George W. Bush in 2003. It was also praised for regularly providing high-quality data on the HIV epidemic, but has not released data since President Trump’s return to the White House and changes in foreign aid.
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Jeremy Levin: The numbers are very, very good.
EMANUEL: The State Department’s Jeremy Levin is hailing the new treatment data released Friday afternoon as a sign of success. Figures show the US had supported nearly 20 million people on HIV treatment globally as of September last year. This is the same number as about a year ago.
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LEVIN: People would be surprised to see how resilient our health programs are and have been.
EMANUEL: But many HIV experts consider that statement misleading. He says that the remaining figures are worrying. They show that a fragile system for preventing and detecting HIV cases has been seriously disrupted. Brian Honorman is with amfAR, the AIDS research foundation.
Brian Honorman: About 24% of frontline health care workers are no longer there. Now they are not being supported.
EMANUEL: He says without those health workers, we see a big drop in the number of new people getting tested for HIV and starting treatment.
Honorman: This is hundreds of thousands of people that we expected to see, and those people are now missing.
EMANUEL: That’s bad news for their own health. And he points out that it also allows the virus to spread and potentially reemerge.
Gabriel Emanuel, NPR News.
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