2 hours agoShareSaveMayeni JonesBBC News, JohannesburgShareSaveReutersGugu used to collect her antiretrovirals from a USAID-funded clinic in central Johannesburg.But when President Trump’s cuts to aid funding were announced earlier this year, she and thousands of other HIV-positive patients across South Africa suddenly faced an uncertain future.Gugu was lucky, the clinic where she got the medication that helps suppress her symptoms contacted her before it closed down.”I was one of the people who was able to get their medication in bulk. I usually collect a three-month prescription. But before my clinic closed, they gave me nine months’ worth of medication.”She will run out of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in September, and then plans on going to her local public hospital for more.A former sex worker, the 54-year-old found out she was HIV-positive after she’d quit the industry.Ten years ago she got a chesty cough, and initially thought it was tuberculosis. She went to a doctor who told her she had a chest infection and treated her for it.But when the treatment failed, she went to a clinic to get an HIV test.”By then I already assumed that I was HIV-positive, and I told the nurse this.”She was right, and she has been on ARVs ever since. We’re not using her real name at her request.She currently works as a project coordinator for an NGO.”We help pregnant sex workers get their ARVs, to ensure their children are born HIV-negative. We also do home visits to make sure that the mothers take their medication on time, and to look after their babies when they go for their monthly check-ups.”Many HIV-positive sex workers in South Africa relied on private clinics funded by the US government’s now-defunct aid agency, USAID, to get their prescriptions and treatments.But most of the facilities closed after US President Donald Trump cut most foreign aid earlier this year.Gugu believes that many sex workers could be discouraged from going to public hospitals for their ARVs if they can no longer get them from clinics.”The problem with going to public hospitals is the time factor. In order to get serviced at these facilities, you have to arrive at 4 or 5am, and they may spend the whole day waiting for their medication. For sex workers, time is money,” Gugu says.She adds that she recently went to her local hospital with some friends to register her details and build a relationship with staff.”The nurse who attended to us was very rude. She told us there was nothing special about sex workers.”She thinks this could lead to many sex workers defaulting on their medication, “especially because their hospital files contain a lot of personal information, and the concern is that sometimes the nurses at these local clinics aren’t always the most sensitive in dealing with this kind of information”.Getty ImagesIn a report released on Thursday, the UN body in charge of fighting HIV/Aids does not single out the US, but says that drastic cuts from a number of donors have sent shockwaves around the world, that the “phenomenal progress” in tackling the illness risks being reversed.”New HIV infections have been reduced by 40% since 2010, and 4.4 million children have been protected from acquiring HIV since 2000. More than 26 million lives have been saved,” UNAids says, warning that if the world does not act, there could be an extra six million new HIV infections and four million Aids-related deaths by 2029.UNAids said that, before the funding cuts, the annual numbers of new HIV infections and Aids-related deaths had sunk to their lowest levels in more than 30 years.All of the data published in the report is from before the US and other donors sla …
