If the Trump regime succeeds in cutting the budget for treating AIDS overseas, the outcome is straightforward: one million or more sub-Saharan Africans could die, experts say. That toll apparently makes no difference at the White House. After all, the regime has also proposed whacking $500 million from a program that provides contraceptives and family planning for women mostly in emerging nations. That means more maternal deaths, which contributes to poverty, which means still more deaths.
Most of the money for the AIDS treatment program, reports Gardiner Harris at The New York Times, is handled by the 13-year-old President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, started by President George W. Bush. The $6 billion currently appropriated for the program buys antiretroviral drugs for about 11.5 million people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Trump wants to hack at least $1.1 billion from the program:
In a briefing for reporters, Hari Sastry, director of the State Department’s Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources, said that everyone now receiving drug treatments under the programs would be allowed to continue, even if the funding cuts were approved.
“We will currently maintain those patients on the treatment,” Mr. Sastry said. He did not explain how that would happen if funding dropped by roughly 20 percent, but the programs have wide bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, where they may be shielded from the proposed cuts.
By suggesting that the proposed cuts wouldn’t hurt HIV-infected people currently in the program, Sastry obviously shows he’s been schooling himself with the regime’s bogus accounting philosophy—you know, the notion that we can spend more for the military while again cutting taxes for the rich and simultaneously slashing the national debt. As my colleague Mark Sumner notes, there is a name for this: fraud. But in this particular instance, it’s not just numbers in a ledger. It’s human lives.
According to Harris, the Global Fund calculates that every $100 million invested in the AIDS program saves 133,000 lives. amfAR, the AIDS research organization, estimates the regime’s proposed cuts might mean a million lives lost and 300,000 children orphaned.
“All of these programs have multiplier effects beyond just those immediately served by them,” said J. Stephen Morrison, who directs global health work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “For the first time ever, after 15 years of steady growth, we’re going to see a radical regression that will have huge effects.”
But, hey, how in the world will the 0.001 percent get the tax relief The Donald has promised them unless some mostly black and brown people in impoverished nations are willing to make a sacrifice?