Wake up, kids! The government of the United States (US) has dropped what might be the most soothing update of the month. Days after the news of the PEPFAR fund freeze shook the global health community, the US Department of State has announced an emergency humanitarian waiver that will exempt Nigeria and some other countries from the 90-day halt.
The announcement, which was made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on Wednesday, January 29, has been described as a welcome development by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). It also called on US President, Donald Trump to “prioritize the U.S. Government’s leadership in the global HIV response to achieve the shared goal of ending AIDS.”
Some context
Started by former US President George Bush in 2003, The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a humanitarian effort of the US government towards the control of HIV/AIDS.
PEPFAR has saved an estimated 26 million lives since 2003, and with its generous $6.5 billion annual budget, it currently provides aid for 20.6 million people. However, on January 26, those lives were put at risk when Trump signed an executive order suspending US foreign aid (for 90 days), which translated to an automatic freeze on PEPFAR. News of the development caused unanimous chaos in Nigeria and other countries where the program provides funding.
What does the humanitarian waiver really mean?
The issuance of the waiver means that PEPFAR can now resume the distribution of HIV medication, but other specifics surrounding the waiver are still unclear. UK-based health news service Medical Xpress reports that “the freeze on other services, including the distribution of preventive drugs, is still thought to be in place.” The New York Times also points out that the nature of the waiver is unclear, adding that PEPFAR’s future remains “in jeopardy” as the waiver might be temporary.
All clear for Nigeria?
Ideally, everyone should be throwing a party now that the funding freeze has been lifted, but the unclear nature of the waiver and the uncertainty surrounding PEPFAR’s future make that impossible.
For Nigeria, where PEPFAR shoulders 90 per cent of the HIV treatment burden and international donors are directly responsible for 96 per cent of the country’s HIV programs, the recent PEPFAR halt is an abrupt wake-up call, as a permanent freeze could painfully mean one thing— the endangerment of the 1.9 million people living with the virus in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) has also expressed similar concerns. Following the news of the waiver on PEPFAR funding, the agency thanked the US government while noting that the coast was still far from clear.
“The Nigerian government appreciates the U.S. government waiver and is mindful of the potential change to foreign aid in the near future under the new administration,” Temitope Ilori, director-general of NACA, said.
“The Nigerian government would intensify domestic resource mobilization strategies towards ownership and sustainability of the HIV response in the country with a view to reducing the risks of donor aid policy shifts to the HIV response while ensuring that the country’s strategic goals and targets in the fight against HIV are achieved,” she continued.
While the reflection of the NACA DG sounds nice, a potential PEPFAR funding cut is not the only thing the Nigerian government has to wake up to; it also has to come to terms with the possibility of facing Nigeria’s malaria problem on its own as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) also provides funding for elimination of Malaria in Nigeria, which accounts for the highest number of malaria cases in the world.
News is boring, but we make it fun. Subscribe to The Big Daily to be the first to know the day’s biggest news