Trump’s Assault On Aid for HIV Abroad

The Trump administration's freeze of all foreign aid has thrown a major program to prevent and treat HIV in poor nations into chaos and put millions of lives in jeopardy.

Dr. Velephi Okello, a deputy health minister from Swaziland, at IAS 2017 in Paris

I remember how the pride glowed across the health minister’s face when she heralded the “great news from the Kingdom of Swaziland.”

It was July 2017, and I was in Paris to report on the biennial International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science. Having grown up gay under the shadow of AIDS, I’d gotten involved in HIV-related volunteer work in high school in the mid-1990s and proceeded to start my reporting career by covering the global pandemic. The optimism I witnessed at that conference was unparalleled since the approval of antiretroviral treatment in 1996 ended the crisis phase of the U.S. epidemic.

In a press conference announcing the Paris confab’s top research findings, we heard from Dr. Velephi Okello, a deputy health minister from Swaziland, which is a small nation nestled within South Africa’s borders. The country, since renamed Eswatini, was burdened with a superlatively severe HIV epidemic, w…