‘Middle Finger to the LGBTQ Community’: Trump Halts US Commemoration of World AIDS Day

By Jake Johnson

This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

The Trump administration drew outrage this week for ending formal US commemoration of World AIDS Day, directing US State Department officials to “refrain from publicly promoting” it through social media or other communication channels.

The decision was reported after the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) released an analysis detailing the harms done by the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign assistance cuts.

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Earlier this year, the Trump administration temporarily halted HIV-related funding, sending global response efforts into “crisis mode,” USAID said. Though President Donald Trump ultimately dropped a proposal to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the administration’s throttling of funds forced clinics to shut down and disrupted key community programs, the report states.

“The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve,” said Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS. “Behind every data point in this report are people—babies and children missed for HIV screening or early HIV diagnosis, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care. We cannot abandon them. We must overcome this disruption and transform the AIDS response.”

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In its reporting on the Trump administration’s decision to halt official commemoration of World AIDS Day, which is on December 1, the New York Times pointed to studies suggesting that “cuts by the United States and other countries could result in 10 million additional HIV infections, including one million among children, and three million additional deaths over the next five years.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), head of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, said in a statement that “silence is not neutrality; it is harm.”

“I’m calling on the administration to immediately reverse this decision and recommit our fight against HIV/AIDS,” he added.

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