South Africa is targeting self-reliance to fund its healthcare sector, its health minister told a UN meeting, saying Washington’s cancellation of a multibillion-dollar HIV/AIDS program was a “wake-up call.”
Aaron Motsoaledi’s comments in New York came days after Semafor first reported that the Trump administration was withdrawing PEPFAR funding to the country, which poured $8 billion into treating the world’s largest HIV/AIDS caseload over two decades.
The US decision is the latest diplomatic scuffle between Pretoria and Washington, which has made repeated false accusations of Afrikaner genocide in Africa’s biggest economy and demanded that South Africa undo its post-apartheid domestic redress laws.
The PEPFAR termination is a fiscal headache for South Africa: Pretoria has set aside a 750 million rand ($45 million) stopgap allocation to keep clinics open, protect HIV/AIDS treatment, and revive clinical research trials — less than 10% of what Washington used to inject into the system annually.