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A crowd of protestors gathered outside of City Hall this afternoon to call for a reversal of federal cuts to Medicaid. (Andrew McGurl\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\nMany clinics that perform abortions, like Planned Parenthood, serve as major providers of HIV testing. The bill strips those clinics of all federal funding.\n<\/p>\n
Additionally, the federal government has altogether eliminated the Centers for Disease Control existing Comprehensive High-Impact HIV Prevention Programs for Community-Based Organizations.
\nA crowd of protestors gathered outside of City Hall this afternoon to call for a reversal of federal cuts to Medicaid. (Andrew McGurl\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n
This initiative, which began under President Donald Trump\u2019s 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.\n<\/p>\n
The CDC\u2019s initial 2020 proposal<\/a> specifically notes the importance of community-based care.\n <\/p>\n \u201cSince the late 1980s, CDC has formally partnered with CBOs\u2026 because of their accessibility, history, and credibility in the community,\u201d the proposal stated. \u201cBuilding individual competencies, organizational capacities, and supportive structural environments among these partners are key strategies\u2026 particularly for \u2026Blacks\/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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Demarco said that initial proposal makes the CDC\u2019s current reversal feel even more malicious and targeted.\n<\/p>\n 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\u2019s first openly HIV-positive public official.\n<\/p>\n Regular monitoring, a sustained regimen of antiretrovirals and general medical treatment are necessary to keep a patient\u2019s infection from spreading.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on the brink of another full-blown AIDS epidemic,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cIt\u2019s what they want \u2014 [to] make [LGBT people] a boogeyman again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Intentional and avoidable<\/p>\n For Demarco, like most gay men who survived the AIDS epidemic\u2019s early years, this fight is deeply personal.\n<\/p>\n In 1991, he was diagnosed with HIV.\n<\/p>\n In 1994, his life partner died of complications related to HIV\/AIDS.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThose deaths were avoidable; my partner died four months before there were drugs to save him,\u201d he said.\u201dI\u2019m confident [the federal government] knows hundreds of thousands could die. That\u2019s what they\u2019ve wanted for decades.\u201d \u201cThe most devastating part of it all is that it\u2019s intentional; it\u2019s unspeakably cruel,\u201d said Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who had earlier addressed the crowd, and used what she referred to as Trump\u2019s failure to succeed militarily in Iran as an example to convey his ineptitude and cruelty in all administrative decisions.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got all these treatments; we\u2019re at the point where you can have a normal life,\u201d she said. \u201cBut now, they\u2019re going to take us back.\u201d\n<\/p>\n International repercussions<\/p>\n Protestors also targeted the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in particular, saying its austerity efforts were cruel by design.\n<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
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Tom Hennes, founder of ThincDesign, listing the potential human costs of the U.S. Agency for International Development\u2019s closure. (Credit: Megan Kapler, HousingWorks)\n<\/p>\n