Trump admin to permanently end PEPFAR funding for South Africa
President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a plan to permanently end funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in South Africa, sending shock waves across the health industry.
President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a plan to permanently end funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in South Africa, sending shock waves across the health industry. 19:57 ET, 18 Jun 2026President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a plan to permanently end funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in South Africa, sending shock waves across the health industry. The new plan, proposed by theState Department, plans to stop the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work on a critical H. I. V. program that helps countries strengthen laboratory networks, support childhood immunizations, and better monitor emerging diseases. “The United States has decided to initiate a phased drawdown ofPEPFARprogramming in South Africa following South Africa’s failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration,” one State Department official told news outlet Semafor. Article continues belowAccording to that official, theState Departmentplans to close the global initiative by early next year. To prepare for the blow, U. S. Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III will meet with local leaders from South Africa’s Ministry of Health as soon as next week to discuss the program's future. According to Semafor, a Senate aide said that State Department officials cited unmet conditions in South Africa as the reason for closing down the agency, including demands that the country reduce its relationship with Iran. “None of these asks have anything to do with health,” the unnamed aide argued. “They’re all political. ”PEPFAR has been celebrated for saving 26 million lives since its creation in 2003 under President George W. Bush. As a result of the overhaul, the changes could affect as many as 12 million people on HIV treatment supported by CDC funding. “This will completely destabilize H. I. V. work abroad,” Dr. Michele Montadon, who led the CDC’s agency team on mother-to-child transmission of HIV until she was laid off last year, said. “We’ve seen service disruptions, deaths and babies born with H. I. V. after shuttering U. S. A. I. D. , and we can expect more to come if C. D. C. is also shut out of this work. ”Despite the major changes, the State Department said its plan would have no effect on the CDC's work abroad. “The State Department and Health and Human Services are working together to preserve the C. D. C. ’s critical capabilities while modernizing how foreign assistance is delivered,” Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement. “The facts are straightforward: The State Department expects C. D. C. overseas funding to increase — not decrease — under the America First Global Health Strategy, and no C. D. C. offices are being closed because of State Department decisions,” he added. Meanwhile, at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, a spokesperson said the Trump administration is looking to modernize a “fragmented system. ”“What is underway is a modernization of a fragmented system that for years tolerated duplication, overlapping investments and poor coordination across agencies,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the department, said. The latest overhaul comes over a year after President Trump ordered a near-total freeze on all foreign aid, placing most employees at the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave. In his order, Trump declared that the agency was being led by “radical left lunatics,” with reports revealing that the agency retained 294 employees out of a total of more than 10,000. A long-time critic of overseas spending, President Trump said his administration had concluded that USAID projects were evidence of “waste and abuse. ” Among the initiatives listed in that report were a grant of $1. 5 million to an LGBTQ group in Serbia, $6 million in Egypt, and $2. 5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam. Critics, however, have disputed the administration’s framing of the funding. For instance, the Egypt project, which Trump authorized in 2019 during his first term, listed water, education, and transportation aid as its pillars. Now, a year after the dramatic move, another country in the region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is facing a major health crisis. Earlier this week, Congo’s Ministry of Health said 72 new Ebola cases were reported in a 24-hour period, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 782 in a month. Those include 181 confirmed deaths, with 29 new ones. Article continues below“One month on, the Ebola disease outbreak is outpacing the response effort,” Kate White, emergency medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Congo, said Monday. “No one knows the true scale or exactly where the disease is spreading in Congo. ”