Many clinics that perform abortions, like Planned Parenthood, serve as major providers of HIV testing. The bill strips those clinics of all federal funding.
Additionally, the federal government has altogether eliminated the Centers for Disease Control existing Comprehensive High-Impact HIV Prevention Programs for Community-Based Organizations.
A crowd of protestors gathered outside of City Hall this afternoon to call for a reversal of federal cuts to Medicaid. (Andrew McGurl/WHYY)
This initiative, which began under President Donald Trump’s first administration, has provided well over $200 million in funding to local service providers in 32 states, including Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico over its five-year history.
The CDC’s initial 2020 proposal specifically notes the importance of community-based care.
“Since the late 1980s, CDC has formally partnered with CBOs… because of their accessibility, history, and credibility in the community,” the proposal stated. “Building individual competencies, organizational capacities, and supportive structural environments among these partners are key strategies… particularly for …Blacks/AfricanAmericans; Hispanics/Latinos; all races/ethnicities of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM); people who inject drugs (PWIDs); and transgender persons.”
Demarco said that initial proposal makes the CDC’s current reversal feel even more malicious and targeted.
In modern HIV management, undetectable equals untransmissible. Without adequate medical care, HIV-positive patients can become a public health risk, said C. Michael Robinson, the former borough manager of Collingdale in Delaware County and Pennsylvania’s first openly HIV-positive public official.
Regular monitoring, a sustained regimen of antiretrovirals and general medical treatment are necessary to keep a patient’s infection from spreading.
“We’re on the brink of another full-blown AIDS epidemic,” Robinson said. “It’s what they want — [to] make [LGBT people] a boogeyman again.”
Intentional and avoidable
For Demarco, like most gay men who survived the AIDS epidemic’s early years, this fight is deeply personal.
In 1991, he was diagnosed with HIV.
In 1994, his life partner died of complications related to HIV/AIDS.
“Those deaths were avoidable; my partner died four months before there were drugs to save him,” he said.”I’m confident [the federal government] knows hundreds of thousands could die. That’s what they’ve wanted for decades.”
Tom Hennes, founder of ThincDesign, listing the potential human costs of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s closure. (Credit: Megan Kapler, HousingWorks)
“The most devastating part of it all is that it’s intentional; it’s unspeakably cruel,” said Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who had earlier addressed the crowd, and used what she referred to as Trump’s failure to succeed militarily in Iran as an example to convey his ineptitude and cruelty in all administrative decisions.
“We’ve got all these treatments; we’re at the point where you can have a normal life,” she said. “But now, they’re going to take us back.”
International repercussions
Protestors also targeted the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in particular, saying its austerity efforts were cruel by design.
The department, helmed by South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk, oversaw the complete dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a half-century-old executive branch agency focused on distributing foreign aid. It has been estimated the USAID cuts have directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
“It risks the lives of millions,” said Tom Hennes, a longtime AIDS activist and founder of New York design firm ThincDesign.
“[Due to USAID’s dismantling] there will be 2 million unnecessary AIDS deaths by 2030; 3.5 million orphans …14 million new deaths in all,” he said.
“They say it’s economical. It’s cynical.”