More than 6 million people could die of AIDS if the United States withdraws supports: Unusida

Since its creation in 2003, Pepfar has saved more than 26 million lives “investing in fundamental programs for prevention, treatment, attention and in 55 countries,” said Friday (February 7) Unusida.

Photo: (EPA) EFE – Gustavo Amador

Since the president of the United States, Donald Trump, decided, on his first day on the return of the White House, to suspend for at least 90 days the disbursement of international cooperation funds, several sectors around the world have expressed concern about their concern about The future of thousands of programs in various areas.

One of the areas in which there are more concerns for the future of the funds, is that of the programs against HIV/AIDS. Although initially these programs were part of the suspension ordered by Trump, days later the US Secretary of State .

Although the decision was held by the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNUSIDA), the agency’s executive deputy director, Christine Stegling, said Friday (February 7) that “there is still a lot of confusion, especially in communities, how exemption will be applied. ”

Although the exemption on the president’s emergency plan for the relief of AIDS (Pepfar), the lack of clarity about the future of the funds that finance the plan could have a negative impact on the people who benefit from the activities From Pepfar, Stegling said.

At present, explained the executive deputy director of UNAIDA, 20 million, of the 30 million people living with HIV in the world, depend on the money that the United States turns for treatment.

“If the Pepfar did not authorize between 2025 and 2029 and no other resources for HIV response were found, there would be a 400 % increase in AIDS deaths,” the agency recently calculated.

This means that, if the financial support provided by the United States to Unusida does not renew, in the next four years 6.3 million people with AIDS could die.

The official stressed that since its creation in 2003, Pepfar has saved more than 26 million lives “investing in fundamental programs for prevention, treatment, attention and in 55 countries.”

Unusida is not the only agency that has expressed concern about an eventual suspension of US resources to Pepfar. Days after Trump’s decision was known, and before Rubio will declare the exception about programs for AIDS treatments, the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, he was “deeply worried” .

In addition to highlighting the amount of lives that are currently saved with the plan, Adanom stressed that a suspension of US funds “could make the world return to the 1980s and 1990s, when millions of people die of HIV each year every year throughout the world, many of them in the United States. ”

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