Fight against AIDS: Associations call on France to mobilize after American budget cuts

"AIDS: Our Greed Kills"... It was under this banner that around forty activists from Aides, Coalition Plus, and Médecins du Monde gathered on Tuesday, April 29, in front of the United States Embassy in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, to denounce the freeze on American aid to the fight against AIDS and call on France to commit itself politically and financially to this cause. The activists briefly blocked a traffic route in this emblematic place in the fight against AIDS, where the Act Up association had covered the obelisk with a giant condom in 1993.

The Trump administration's announcement in late January that it was suspending nearly all US foreign aid funding, including the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), disrupted many programs around the world, as PEPFAR accounts for more than 50% of global public funding for the disease. Since then, a waiver has been granted allowing the limited resumption of certain essential services, but many programs have been shut down, such as in South Africa, Kenya, and Lesotho, the country that "no one has ever heard of," mocked by Donald Trump in March.

You have 77.74% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.