It was during a visit to Jinja, Uganda, last month that Chris Macoloo, the regional director for Africa at the global nonprofit World Neighbors, grasped the worsening effects of funding cuts to the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
People living with HIV and AIDS, or PLWHA, were receiving only a week’s worth of antiretroviral, or ARV, medication, instead of the two-month supply they had come to rely on. Sometimes, there was no medication at all.
That meant patients had to make repeated trips to health facilities to check for availability — a costly disruption in terms of transport and incidental spending.