Activists have delivered a stark warning to the US government: without the full restoration of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), lives will be lost.
On Thursday (17 April), around 30 HIV advocates staged a powerful protest in Washington D.C., marching from the National Academy of Sciences to the gates of the US State Department. There, they stacked 200 mock coffins, symbolising the human cost of interrupted HIV treatment and prevention programs.
The protest, organised by Health Gap, Housing Works, and long-time AIDS activist Peter Staley, comes amid growing concern over the future of PEPFAR, the landmark HIV/AIDS initiative launched by President George W. Bush to combat the epidemic in the developing world.
Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in January that PEPFAR would be spared from a broader freeze on international aid, the program is reportedly still not fully operational.
Matt Rose, a senior public policy advocate at the Human Rights Campaign, told The Advocate that while some life-saving medications are still being distributed, access is “massively low,” and the situation is “getting very precarious.”
In response, protesters sought to make a visual and emotional impact, laying coffin after coffin in front of the State Department to demand urgent action.
“We have seen the administration make moves back after public protests before,” Rose said. “We hope Rubio will remember that PEPFAR saves lives.”
Compounding the crisis is the Trump administration’s effective shutdown of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the body historically responsible for managing PEPFAR contracts.
Controversy intensified after Elon Musk’s so-called Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) launched what critics call a baseless crusade against USAID. Just weeks into Trump’s presidency, DOGE sought to root out what it labelled corruption. In February, Musk falsely tweeted that USAID had “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan responded to the tweet, stating: “He just tweets out complete disinformation, complete lies. Even if it was leaked from a lab, which we have no evidence for, COVID isn’t a bioweapon and USAID didn’t fund its creation.”
In addition to restricting PEPFAR, the Trump administration has limited access to HIV prevention medication, making it available only to pregnant and breastfeeding women. HIV experts and global health organisations warn that such measures could severely undermine progress in fighting the epidemic, particularly in low-income countries.
With thousands relying on PEPFAR for survival, advocates are pleading with the US government to fully reinstate the program before more lives are lost.
