By shutting South Africa out of its overseas funding for the roll-out of the revolutionary six-monthly HIV prevention jab which could potentially end Aids, the Trump administration undercuts its own stated mission for helping other African countries, says a US HIV activist.
In September, the US government announced that it would join the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, to buy LEN for African countries with high HIV infection rates.
The Trump administration revealed its support was a market-shaping initiative with the goal to increase LEN production and uptake, and, in effect, bring down the price of the jab as fast as possible.
But the US government left the country South Africa with the largest market for LEN, because it has the highest number of new HIV infections in the world off the list of the 10 states it will fund, effectively betraying its own public justification for intervening at all.
In sharp contrast, the Global Fund is allocating three-quarters of the doses it is buying for nine countries to South Africa.
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By shutting South Africa out of its overseas funding for the roll-out of the revolutionary six-monthly HIV prevention jab which could potentially end Aids, the Trump administration undercuts its own stated mission for helping other African countries, warns Mitchell Warren, the head of an international advocacy organisation, Avac.
The injection, which contains the antiretroviral drug lenacapavir and gives almost foolproof protection for HIV-negative people against contracting the virus, is like a powerful chemical condom, says Linda-Gail Bekker of the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and lead scientist for a study which tested the jab, known as lenacapavir LEN, on teen girls and young women.
