{"id":785922,"date":"2026-07-26T18:48:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T18:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/785922\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T18:48:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T18:48:22","slug":"amid-row-over-exclusion-us-concedes-that-hiv-approach-needs-to-include-all-people-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/785922\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid Row Over Exclusion, US Concedes That HIV Approach Needs To Include \u2018All People At Risk\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"\"Activists disrupt the US government session on its bilateral health agreements.<\/p>\n

RIO DE JANEIRO \u2013 The United States has conceded that the HIV epidemic cannot be stopped \u201cunless we have services for all people at risk\u201d at a major event on the eve of the International AIDS Conference.<\/p>\n

Dr Rebecca Bunnell,<\/a> deputy head of implementing the US President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), made the remark at a US government event to explain the new \u201cAmerica First Global Health Strategy<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t forget any group because if we do, we will fail,\u201d added Deputy Assistant Secretary Bunnell, a deputy assistant secretary who is second in command to the US global AIDS coordinator.<\/p>\n

She was responding to a question about how to include \u201ckey populations\u201d \u2013 groups most at risk of HIV, including sex workers, men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs \u2013 who have been excluded from the new US approach to HIV, which prioritises preventing HIV in mothers and babies.<\/p>\n

\u2018Key population\u2019 exclusion<\/p>\n

A new study<\/a> released last week reported on huge disruptions to HIV treatment throughout the world following the Trump administration\u2019s changes to PEPFAR.<\/p>\n

Some 1,714 HIV service sites had closed, including over 1,000 public health facilities, according to the PEPFAR Pulse Study conducted by the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).<\/p>\n

\u201cPartners were most likely to have permanently stopped providing services for key populations, the groups most vulnerable to HIV. Among partners providing HIV treatment, more than one in five (21%) had permanently stopped at least one HIV clinical care activity,\u201d according to the International AIDS Society, which released the research.<\/p>\n

Dr Temitope Ilori, Director General of Nigeria\u2019s National Agency for the Control of AIDS, told the session that \u201cthe new policy\u201d had disrupted some programmes aimed at key populations but several of these had been integrated into government programmes.<\/p>\n

\"\"US officials Rebecca Bunnell and Jeff Graham and Dr Temitope Ilori, Director General of Nigeria\u2019s National Agency for the Control of AIDS.
\n\u2018You lie, people die\u2019<\/p>\n

Earlier, the US government session had been interrupted by HIV activists blowing whistles and chanting: \u201cYou lie, people die. Restore PEPFAR now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor months, there has been a public health emergency caused by your government\u2019s deadly disruptions in PEPFAR programming and global health aid, and we will not allow this fact to be erased. We will not allow our communities to be erased by your anti-science, anti-LGBTQ, anti-participation agenda,\u201d said HealthGAP\u2019s Asia Russell, who had taken the microphone from Jeff Graham, the acting US global AIDS co-ordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, you\u2019re talking about memoranda of understanding with nice words like country ownership and self-reliance. But let\u2019s be honest. These are coercive bilateral deals that expel people with HIV from the negotiating table on purpose in order to try to extract mineral wealth, to try to extract data, to extract whatever the Trump administration wants,\u201d added Russell.<\/p>\n

\"\"Health GAP\u2019s Asia Russell (centre).<\/p>\n

Graham later told the meeting that, while the MOUs had been linked to access to countries\u2019 assets including critical minerals, \u201cthere are no critical minerals mentioned in any MOU\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, some of the health MOUs<\/a> \u2013 notably with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Guinea \u2013 were signed alongside mineral deals. Meanwhile, the US MOU with Zambia reportedly fell apart as the two countries could not agree on US terms for mineral access.<\/p>\n

All MOUs involve co-financing from partners. In Nigeria\u2019s case, it is investing $3 billion to the US investment of $2 billion.<\/p>\n

Graham said that while the MOUs were \u201cnon-binding\u201d, if a country did not live up to its co-financing promises, \u201cwe will have to assess that because we\u2019re trying to make progress together\u201d.<\/p>\n

He described co-investment as a positive because if countries were able to finance their own health response, that \u201cultimately is a good thing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Several of the MOUs envisage a rapid path to government self-reliance, but Graham said that a transition resilience fund would assist if countries ran into trouble.<\/p>\n

Combat the infodemic in health information and support health policy reporting from the global South. Our growing network of journalists in Africa, Asia, Geneva and New York connect the dots between regional realities and the big global debates, with evidence-based, open access news and analysis. To make a personal or organisational contribution click here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Activists disrupt the US government session on its bilateral health agreements. RIO DE JANEIRO \u2013 The United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-785922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}