Africa CDC to push local health funding plans as HIV relief at risk

African countries need to quickly find ways to raise local health funding as programs including the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief may be reduced, the continent’s chief health advisory body said.

The call comes after President Donald Trump decided to exit the World Health Organisation, a move that could undermine global health security.

“There needs to be a push toward more sustainable, predictable financing for public health that comes from domestic resources,” Ngashi Ngongo, a principal advisor at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a briefing Thursday. “We need to rethink how we can accelerate them as a an alternative, to build some resilience, so that all these programs do not just collapse.”

PEPFAR was initiated in 2003 by then President George W. Bush. It has saved an estimated 25 million lives and allowed 5.5 million children to be born free of the HIV virus that causes AIDS. At least nine African countries have AIDS programs that risk being affected.

Efforts to find an HIV vaccine are still ongoing and while there are preventative treatments, they have to be taken regularly. Once contracted, life-long use of antiretroviral drugs is necessary to stop the auto-immune disease, which killed about 630 000 people globally in 2023, from becoming fatal.

The WHO decision alone will hurt Africa as the agency has been key in providing technical assistance for health programs on the continent, Ngongo said.

Some funding gaps may also be filled by China, Japan and Korea, he said. That’s as these countries have previously helped with cash, vaccines and equipment.

“We’ll be exploring the opportunities of broadening the resource mobilization toward those other countries that are really willing to step in,” he said.

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