Patrick Arbuthnot was browsing his emails on what seemed like a normal workday in his lab in Johannesburg when he saw a strange notification pop up.“Stop Work,” it read.
Arbuthnot does not remember exactly what else the United States official said in the body of text in January, but the one line seared in his memory was enough, even if it was almost impossible to believe.
For two years, the researcher had worked on developing an HIV vaccine to possibly help put an end to one of Africa’s most deadly diseases for good. His lab at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) had already spent thousands of dollars in US funding on experiments. Now, all of that crucial work had to be paused – or worse, permanently halted.
“It’s all such a waste, it’s all such a waste. Those were the words that kept running in my head when I saw the message,” Arbuthnot, who directs Wits’s Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit, told Al Jazeera, months after the nightmare unfolded. “It seemed like it was all just for nothing.” Advertisement
Dozens of health trials across Africa were forced to grind to an abrupt halt in late January after US President Donald Trump pulled the plug on millions of dollars in funding without warning. His executive order paused aid to de …
