Two days ago, Charles King — the head of the New York City-based nonprofit Housing Works — received a text message from an AIDS activist in Nigeria.
“He wrote to me to say, ‘My medications will run out on April 28th. I’ve been to three different clinics, two of them are closed, and the other has no retroviral treatment available. Can you please find treatment in the United States that you can send to me?’” said King, speaking in front of the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Before him, dozens of activists listened in. And behind him, there lay 200 cardboard coffins — each of which represented 100,000 people who were once supported by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The program is credited with saving 26 million lives since it was founded by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003, but its future is at stake amid the Trump administration’s U.S. foreign aid cuts.
About the author
Elissa Miolene
Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
