2 weeks Ago
As a sex worker, the virus felt unavoidable when the only protection option was condoms: Some clients refused to use them and threatened violence if she tried to insist. MASAKA, Uganda—Every morning for the past four years, Agnes Mutesi, 30, has taken a pill that prevents her from getting infected with HIV. MASAKA, Uganda—Every morning for the past four years, Agnes Mutesi, 30, has taken a pill that prevents her from getting infected with HIV.
As a sex worker, the virus felt unavoidable when the only protection option was condoms: Some clients refused to use them and threatened violence if she tried to insist. In 2020, when a health worker introduced her to the medication known as PrEP, or preexposure prophylaxis, it felt like her life had been saved. The medicine prevented HIV from reproducing and establishing itself in her body: "It is how I was sure to not get infected," she said.
But in mid-February, Mutesi ran out of PrEP. She doesn't know when she will be able to get more. The clinic that she visits in Masaka, a Ugandan city just south of the equator, is run by a local organization, but most of its HIV prevention services were paid for by the U.
S. government through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Then-President George W.
Bush created the program in 2003 to address the global HIV crisis. Buoyed by bipartisan support, PEPFAR has saved more than 26 million lives by facilitating access to HIV treatment while also preventing millions more people from getting infected. Mutesi's clinic was forced to shut down most of its services in late January, when U.
S. President Donald Trump began a freeze on foreign aid while his administration conducts a spending review. PEPFAR program operators are now waiting to learn whether they have been eliminated after the administration cut 83 percent of programs from the U.
S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administered the majority of PEPFAR initiatives. These include Ugandan HIV.
.. Andrew Green , Andrew Green.
