Connect with us

Health

Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators

Published

on

Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators

Caroline Kennedy wrote a scathing letter to key senators on Tuesday, calling her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “predator” addicted to attention from airing dangerous views on vaccinations and someone who is unfit to be the nation’s health secretary.

She urged lawmakers, who will be questioning Mr. Kennedy at his confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday, to reject his nomination. She cited his lack of experience, misinformed views on vaccines and personal attributes. In the letter, she described how he led other family members “down the path of drug addiction.”

“His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

Her letter was first reported in The Washington Post.

Ms. Kennedy expressed particular outrage over the new disclosures in his ethics agreement filed with the Senate, which she described as outlining how his “crusade against vaccination has benefited him in other ways.”

Advertisement

She cited Mr. Kennedy’s decision to keep a financial stake in litigation against Merck, which makes a key vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) that is administered to protect against cervical cancer.

“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” Ms. Kennedy wrote.

As President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ambassador to Australia, Ms. Kennedy was actively involved in promoting the HPV vaccine, which has put Australia on a path to eliminate cervical cancer. She was instrumental in persuading Mr. Biden to expand his “cancer moonshot” initiative to the Indo-Pacific region.

In her role as ambassador, Ms. Kennedy said, she was reluctant to make public comments against Mr. Kennedy, who launched his presidential campaign in 2023 as a primary challenger to Mr. Biden before running as an independent candidate. When Mr. Kennedy dropped his presidential bid, he endorsed Mr. Trump, who, after winning the election, named Mr. Kennedy as his choice for health secretary.

After that, she broke with her cousin, saying his views about vaccination were dangerous.

Advertisement

Her letter painted Mr. Kennedy as a charismatic figure, “willing to take risks and break the rules,” and able to attract others through the strength of his magnetic personality. Then she traced a tragic history of Mr. Kennedy’s influence over other family members.

“But siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death,” she wrote, “while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life.”

Mr. Kennedy’s younger brother David died in Palm Beach County in May of 1984 of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his body fluids, authorities said at the time.

Other relatives have also spoken out against Mr. Kennedy, including his brother Joseph Kennedy II and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who described his comments on race and vaccines as “deplorable and untruthful.”

On Tuesday, Jack Schlossberg, Ms. Kennedy’s son, who has also been critical of Mr. Kennedy, posted a video on social media of his mother reading the letter she had written.

Advertisement

“I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity, integrity and service,” Mr. Schlossberg wrote.

Ms. Kennedy, in the letter sent Tuesday, gave her cousin credit for overcoming his drug addiction, which Mr. Kennedy has discussed extensively. By his own account, Mr. Kennedy became addicted to heroin when he was 14, in 1968, as he struggled to cope with the assassination of his father. In 1984, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possessing heroin, and entered treatment.

But Ms. Kennedy was harsh in criticism of her cousin’s advocacy against vaccines, describing it as part of an addiction to attention and power.

“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs,” she wrote.

Ms. Kennedy also highlighted “the conspiratorial half-truths he has told about vaccines,” in connection with the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, which she said “cost lives.”

Advertisement

The letter was addressed to senators who lead the committees that will be reviewing his nomination this week, including Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho; Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon; Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont.

She noted that the family is close and that speaking out was difficult. Still, she faulted her cousin for using the family’s legacy of tragedy for political gain. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a campaign for president in 1968. Her father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in Dallas in 1963.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign — and then groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” the letter said. “Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father.”

She suggested that her father John F. Kennedy, her uncle Robert F. Kennedy and another uncle, the long-serving lawmaker Ted Kennedy, “would be disgusted.”

She closed the letter with a plea for the senators to reject her cousin’s nomination on behalf of the doctors, nurses, scientists and caregivers who fuel the American health care system.

Advertisement

“They deserve a secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advances we have already made,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “They deserve a stable, moral and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy — and so do the rest of us.”

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Health

Behind R.F.K. Jr.’s Vow to ‘Follow the Science’ on Vaccines

Published

on

Behind R.F.K. Jr.’s Vow to ‘Follow the Science’ on Vaccines

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent the first day of his back-to-back confirmation hearings deftly avoiding questions about his views on vaccines. On the second day, when a prominent Republican senator insisted there was no link between vaccines and autism, Mr. Kennedy shot back that a new study “showed the opposite.”

“I just want to follow the science,” Mr. Kennedy declared.

Following the science has been a familiar refrain for Mr. Kennedy, whose confirmation as health secretary appears all but assured in a vote expected Thursday. But the exchange in the Senate raises questions about just what type of science Mr. Kennedy is consulting. It foreshadows how, if confirmed, Mr. Kennedy could continue to sow doubts about vaccines.

Academics have pounced on the study that Mr. Kennedy cited during the hearing, shredding it as methodologically faulty and biased. The study emanated from a network of vaccine skeptics who share some of Mr. Kennedy’s views — an ecosystem that includes the author of the study, the editor of the journal that published it and the advocacy group that financed it.

“We authors were delighted and honored that R.F.K. Jr. referred to our work in his confirmation hearing,” the study’s lead author, Anthony Mawson, said in an email. A spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Advertisement

Dr. Mawson, an epidemiologist, said he first met Mr. Kennedy at an autism conference in 2017. Mr. Kennedy cites Dr. Mawson’s research 33 times in his 2023 book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak.”

His study was rejected “without explanation” by several mainstream medical journals, Dr. Mawson said. So he turned for advice to Andrew Wakefield, the author of the 1998 study, now retracted, that sparked the initial furor over vaccines and autism. Mr. Wakefield encouraged him to submit the study to a new journal called Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.

That publication is led by some notable vaccine critics, including three who headlined a Washington rally in 2022 with Mr. Kennedy to protest Covid vaccine mandates.

As the nation’s health secretary, Mr. Kennedy “would have wide powers to advance his favored research studies, publications, or scientific data,” according to Lawrence O. Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University. Mr. Kennedy’s critics fear that the public will have neither the time nor the training to sort through a war that seems to pit one study against another, and that the result will be a rapid decline in confidence in vaccines.

“The Mawson paper epitomizes Kennedy’s consistent inability to distinguish junk science from reliable information,” said Dr. John P. Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, who said that study and some of the others Mr. Kennedy has cited in the past are published by “fringe journals.”

Advertisement

Mr. Kennedy has said that he is not anti-vaccine, but rather in favor of vaccine safety.

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine,” Mr. Kennedy said on the first day of his confirmation hearings. “I will do nothing as H.H.S. secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking it.”

Mr. Kennedy’s insistence that more research is necessary when it comes to vaccine safety has drawn support from some Republicans, who say they welcome his skepticism.

“I don’t understand why my colleagues all of sudden say we can’t question science,” Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, said during one of Mr. Kennedy’s hearings. He added, “When you start looking at the rise of autism, why wouldn’t we be looking at everything?”

But Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who has advised administrations of both parties, said Mr. Kennedy’s demands for additional data go too far when they concern vaccines and autism. Mainstream scientists say the issue is settled.

Advertisement

“That’s the equivalent of me saying until Newton comes back and shows me that apple falling from the tree, I do not believe gravity exists,” Dr. Osterholm said.

Doctors who have examined the way Mr. Kennedy uses scientific research say he also has a tendency to cherry-pick particular findings from prominent researchers, as he did during a podcast in 2022.

During that appearance, he cited a study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2000 to suggest that improvements in sanitation and hygiene — and not vaccines — fueled a drop in deaths from infectious diseases during the first half of the 20th century. That is true. But Mr. Kennedy failed to note that the study also reported that vaccines introduced in the second half of the 20th century had “virtually eliminated” deaths from diseases including polio and measles.

During one of his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy cited work by a well-known vaccine scientist, Dr. Gregory Poland, to suggest Black people should follow a different vaccine schedule because they needed fewer antigens, the vaccine components that provoke an immune response.

Dr. Poland did not respond to requests for comment. But he told National Public Radio that his work did not support Mr. Kennedy’s assertion.

Advertisement

Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Mawson have long aired similar concerns about vaccines.

In an appearance before the Mississippi legislature in 2009, Dr. Mawson called for more vaccine safety research and “a more flexible approach to vaccination requirements for school attendance.” In a 2011 lawsuit, Dr. Mawson said the testimony had cost him his job as an epidemiologist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

In 2017, Dr. Mawson published a pilot study comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children.

The study relied on a survey of parents who home-schooled their children and found higher rates of autism among vaccinated children, compared with those who had not been vaccinated. The study was funded in part by Generation Rescue, a nonprofit associated with Jenny McCarthy, a television personality who has promoted claims of a link between vaccines and autism.

Dr. Mawson by that time had established the Chalfont Research Institute, a charity that operates out of his home in Jackson, Miss. The institute reported revenue of just $57 in 2021, the most recent figures available.

Advertisement

In 2019, it received charitable contributions of $160,000, tax records show. The bulk of that money, $150,000, came from the National Vaccine Information Center, a group whose mission includes supporting research on “vaccine-associated deaths, injuries and chronic illness.”

Like Mr. Kennedy, the group’s president and co-founder, Barbara Loe Fisher, has long called for research comparing “total health outcomes” including the risk of autism, in vaccinated and unvaccinated children. When Dr. Mawson approached her group with a proposal, she said, the center reviewed his pilot study of 2017, approved his plan and provided $150,000 in funding.

That money paid for the paper Mr. Kennedy cited at the hearing, during an exchange with Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a doctor.

The journal that published the study, Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, advertises itself as peer-reviewed, meaning its research is evaluated by anonymous independent experts before publication. Dr. Mawson said his paper had undergone review by two such experts.

Some people associated with the journal are also associated with Mr. Kennedy.

Advertisement

James Lyons-Weiler, the journal’s editor in chief, described himself as a longtime ally of Mr. Kennedy’s in a yearslong “fight across 20 states” for vaccine exemptions.

“Honored to call him my friend,” he wrote on social media last year.

The journal’s editorial board includes the chief executive and the chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy led until he began his presidential campaign in 2023.

The board also includes members who sell products or services for people who are concerned about vaccines. One of its editorial board members offers $2,350 telehealth appointments for “post-vaccine syndrome.” Another sells $90 “spike detox” supplements marketed for “vaccine injury syndrome” that is meant to get “you back to that pre-Covid feeling.”

The study by Dr. Mawson that Mr. Kennedy cited at the hearing focused on about 47,000 children enrolled in Florida Medicaid from 1999 to 2011 and looked at billing data to determine their vaccination status.

Advertisement

The study found very few billing records for unvaccinated children with autism — eight who were born prematurely and 54 overall. It concluded that vaccination was significantly associated with higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, particularly in infants who were born prematurely.

By contrast, large-scale studies in respected medical journals, including an analysis of five studies involving more than 1.2 million children, have found no association between vaccines and autism.

But even as Dr. Mawson’s research took shape, problems emerged. The paper notes that researchers lost access to the database they used to perform the study. Dr. Alex Morozov, an expert on clinical trial design who met with Dr. Mawson to discuss the study, said he viewed that as a red flag.

Dr. Morozov also said the study had a “fundamental flaw”: It failed to account for the possibility that vaccinated children might have more encounters with the medical system than unvaccinated children, whose illnesses would not be captured by billing data.

The study also failed to account for factors like family history of autism, the child’s gender (boys are diagnosed with higher rates of autism than girls) or the possibility that children might have been vaccinated outside the Florida Medicaid system, said Bertha Hidalgo, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Advertisement

Dr. Mawson strongly defended the work, noting that the study “carefully documents both its strengths and limitations,” but contending that critics focused only on the limitations. “Nevertheless,” he said, “further research is needed to replicate the findings and to unravel the mechanisms involved.”

At the Senate hearing, Mr. Cassidy pressed Mr. Kennedy to accept that the vaccines and autism debate was settled. He reminded Mr. Kennedy that he had been shown the study of 1.2 million children that found no link between the two.

“I’m a doc, trying to understand,” Mr. Cassidy said, adding, “Convince me that you will become the public health advocate, but not just churn old information so that there’s never a conclusion.”

To that, Mr. Kennedy replied, “I’m going to be an advocate for strong science. You show me those scientific studies, and you and I can meet about it. And there are other studies as well. I’d love to show those to you.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Health

Cancer vaccine shows promising results for certain patients

Published

on

Cancer vaccine shows promising results for certain patients

There could be new hope on the horizon for kidney cancer patients in the form of an experimental vaccine.

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Yale Cancer Center and other universities have announced early findings from a study of an anti-tumor vaccine for patients with advanced kidney cancer.

“Patients with stage 3 or 4 kidney cancer are at high risk of recurrence,” said co-senior author and co-principal investigator Toni Choueiri, MD, director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Cancer at Dana-Farber, in a press release.

Advertisement

DISEASE STARTS ON YOUR PLATE, CARDIOLOGIST SAYS — HERE’S WHAT TO CHANGE

“The tools we have to lower that risk are not perfect, and we are relentlessly looking for more.”

There could be new hope on the horizon for kidney cancer patients in the form of an experimental vaccine. (iStock)

After undergoing surgery to remove a malignant tumor, the study’s nine participants received a cancer vaccine that was intended to “train” their immune systems to identify and attack any lingering cancer cells, according to the press release.

Each vaccine was personalized to match the individual patient’s tumor type based on cancer cells that were removed during surgery. These cells contain “neoantigens,” which are “tiny fragments of mutant proteins,” the release stated. The researchers used “predictive algorithms” to determine which neoantigens should be included in the vaccine to provide the highest level of immunity. 

Advertisement

PROSTATE CANCER CASES SPIKE IN THIS US STATE AS DOCTORS SHARE LIKELY REASON

Five of the patients also received ipilimumab, a type of immunotherapy drug.

All nine patients showed a “successful anti-cancer immune response” after getting the vaccine. After an average of 34.7 months, they all remained cancer-free.

Within three weeks of receiving the vaccine, patients showed an “immune response,” with T-cells spiking by more than 166 times, the release said. (T-cells, also known as T lymphocytes, are immune cells that help to fight cancer and prevent infection.)

“The tools we have to lower that risk are not perfect and we are relentlessly looking for more.”

Advertisement

In the study, the T cells were found to remain in the patient’s body for up to three years and attacked the existing tumor cells.

“We observed a rapid, substantial, and durable expansion of new T cell clones related to the vaccine,” said Patrick Ott, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Cancer Vaccines at Dana-Farber.

“These results support the feasibility of creating a highly immunogenic personalized neoantigen vaccine in a lower mutation burden tumor and are encouraging, though larger-scale studies will be required to fully understand the clinical efficacy of this approach.”

Kidney ultrasound

For most stage 3 or 4 kidney cancer patients, the standard treatment is surgical removal of the tumor, which is often followed by an immunotherapy drug. (iStock)

The results of the clinical trial were reported in the journal Nature on Feb. 5. 

“We’re very excited about these results, which show such a positive response in all nine patients with kidney cancer,” Choueiri noted.

Advertisement

For most stage 3 or 4 kidney cancer patients, the standard treatment is surgical removal of the tumor, which is often followed by an immunotherapy drug called Pembrolizumab (Keytruda).

COMMON CANCER TYPE COULD BE DETECTED WITH NEW BLOOD TEST

“Pembrolizumab induces an immune response that reduces the risk of the cancer coming back,” according to Dana-Farber. “However, about two-thirds of patients can still recur and have limited treatment options.”

First author David A. Braun, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist and physician-scientist at Yale Cancer Center and Yale School of Medicine, noted that the approach used in this study was “truly distinct from vaccine attempts in kidney cancer.”

Medical professional preparing injection of vaccine or treatment

“We pick targets that are unique to the cancer and different from any normal part of the body, so the immune system can be effectively ‘steered’ toward the cancer in a very specific way,” a researcher said in the release.  (iStock)

“We pick targets that are unique to the cancer and different from any normal part of the body, so the immune system can be effectively ‘steered’ toward the cancer in a very specific way,” Braun said in the release. 

Advertisement

“We learned which specific targets in the cancer are most susceptible to immune attack and demonstrated that this approach can generate long-lasting immune responses, directing the immune system to recognize cancer. We believe this work can form a foundation for the development of neoantigen vaccines in kidney cancer.”

‘Exciting and promising’

Charles Nguyen, MD, a medical oncologist who specializes in kidney cancer at City of Hope in Orange County, California, noted that kidney cancer is among the 10 most common cancers among men and women in the U.S. 

“This is a very exciting and promising tool for many of our patients with kidney cancer, where we can one day make a cure possible for all.”

“Patients with early stage (localized) kidney cancer are often first treated with surgery to remove the tumor — however, many patients have a risk of the cancer coming back years after surgery, and there is a great interest in finding ways to lower the risk of cancer recurrence,” Nguyen, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital.

“This exciting clinical trial evaluated a personalized cancer vaccine that uses genetic information from each patient’s cancer to train and enhance the patient’s immune system to recognize the cancer and prevent it from recurring.” 

Advertisement

      

While Nguyen acknowledged that this was a small study, all nine patients who received the vaccine were cancer-free even three years later. 

“This is a very exciting and promising tool for many of our patients with kidney cancer, where we can one day make a cure possible for all.”

Side effects and limitations

Some patients did experience side effects from the vaccine, including local reactions at the vaccine injection site and flu-like symptoms, although “no higher-grade side effects were reported.”

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER

Advertisement

The researchers also acknowledged that there were some limitations associated with the study.

“There were limitations in the antigen-prediction tools available at the time and in the ability to target only a single antigen,” they wrote.

Man at doctor

Some patients did experience side effects from the vaccine, including local reactions at the vaccine injection site and flu-like symptoms. (IStock)

“Moreover, it was conducted in the setting of active metastatic disease in a number of study participants.”

Future research with larger clinical trials are planned to confirm the vaccine’s effectiveness and full potential, the release stated. 

For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health

Advertisement

Funding for this study was provided by the Gateway for Cancer Research, the U.S. Department of Defense, Yale Cancer Center, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Trust Family Foundation, Michael Brigham, Pan-Mass Challenge, Hinda L. and Arthur Marcus Foundation, The Loker Pinard Fund for Kidney Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Conquer Cancer Foundation/Sontag Foundation, the release stated.

Continue Reading

Health

Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment

Published

on

Foreign Aid Freeze Leaves Millions Without H.I.V. Treatment

Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, H.I.V. groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children. Subsequent waivers from the State Department have clarified that the work can continue, but the funds and legal paperwork to do so are still missing.

With the near closure of the American aid agency known as U.S.A.I.D. and its recall of officers posted abroad, there is little hope that the situation will resolve quickly, experts warned.

H.I.V. treatment and services were funded through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a $7.5 billion program that was frozen along with all foreign aid on Mr. Trump’s first day in office.

Since its start in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration, PEPFAR has delivered lifesaving treatment to as many as 25 million people in 54 countries and had enjoyed bipartisan support. The program was due for a five-year reauthorization in 2023; it survived an effort by some House Republicans to end it and was renewed for one year.

Without treatment, millions of people with H.I.V. would be at risk of severe illness and premature death. The loss of treatment also threatens to reverse the dramatic progress made against H.I.V. in recent years and could spur the emergence of drug-resistant strains of H.I.V.; both outcomes could have a global impact, including in the United States.

Advertisement

The pause on aid and the stripping down of U.S.A.I.D. have delivered a “system shock,” said Christine Stegling, a deputy executive director at UNAIDS, the United Nations’ H.I.V. division.

“Now you need to see how you can work with the system as it is, to make sure that what is theoretically possible will actually happen,” she said.

On Jan. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver for lifesaving medicines and medical services, ostensibly allowing for the distribution of H.I.V. medicines. But the waiver did not name PEPFAR, leaving recipient organizations awaiting clarity.

On Sunday, another State Department waiver said more explicitly that it would cover H.I.V. testing and treatment as well as prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, according to a memo viewed by The New York Times. The memo did not include H.I.V. prevention — except for pregnant and breastfeeding women — or support for orphaned and vulnerable children.

Although PEPFAR is funded by the State Department, roughly two-thirds of its grants are implemented through U.S.A.I.D. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Neither organization has released funds to grantees since the freeze was initiated.

Advertisement

In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Rubio appeared to blame the recipient organizations for not acting on the waiver, saying he had “real questions about the competence” of the groups. “I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” he said.

But experts familiar with PEPFAR’s requirements said his comments belied the complexity of its system of approvals.

“The messaging and guidance from the State Department expose an ignorance of how these programs function — and an alarming lack of compassion for the millions of lives at risk,” said Jirair Ratevosian, who served as chief of staff for PEPFAR in the Biden administration.

For instance, the stop-work orders compelled each program to cease immediately. The organizations are now legally required to wait for equally explicit instructions and cannot proceed on the basis of a general memo, according to a senior official at a large global health organization that receives PEPFAR funds.

“We have to wait till we get individual letters on each project that tell us not only we can start work, but tell us which work we can start up and with how much money,” the official said. The official asked not to be named for fear of retaliation; 90 percent of the organization’s money comes from PEPFAR.

Advertisement

The freeze is also disrupting the network of smaller organizations that deliver H.I.V. treatment and services in low-income nations.

In a survey of 275 organizations in 11 sub-Saharan countries conducted over the past week, all reported that their programs or services had shut down or were turning people away, said Dr. Stellah Bosire, executive director of the Africa Center for Health Systems and Gender Justice.

At least 70 organizations reported disruptions in H.I.V. prevention, testing and treatment services, and 41 said that some programs had closed. “Without immediate intervention, these funding suspensions could lead to devastating reversals in public health progress,” Dr. Bosire said in an email.

In Kenya, 40,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers have been affected by the freeze, according to Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, who was deputy chief of communications at the American mission in Nairobi until Monday. In South Africa, the halt in funding will affect the salaries of more than 15,000 health workers and operations across the country, the nation’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, said during a televised news conference last week.

Some organizations rely on a patchwork of grants, with a stream of funding from one donor applied to purchasing medications and another stream applied to paying staff. Interruption of even one source can hobble the clinics, leaving them without medications to dispense or workers to dispense them.

Advertisement

The Uganda Key Populations Consortium, an umbrella organization that provides H.I.V. treatment and other services, has lost 70 percent of its funding. It has shuttered 30 of the 54 drop-in centers around the country that dispense medications, and it terminated the contracts of 28 of its 35 staff members.

The organization received about $200,000 per year from the C.D.C. via the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University, as well as an $8 million grant over five years from U.S.A.I.D. The latter provided housing and employment assistance, including to gay and transgender people, and has been shut down to comply with Mr. Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

In 2023, Uganda enacted a sweeping law that criminalized consensual sex between same-sex adults and made same-sex relations while having H.I.V. punishable by death. It has caused scores of Ugandans to be evicted from homes and fired from jobs.

“Cases of human rights violations haven’t really slowed, and now it’s really concerning,” said Richard Lusimbo, director general of the Uganda Key Populations Consortium.

Richard Lusimbo in Kampala, Uganda, last year observing a hearing in Uganda’s constitutional court in which it upheld an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. law.Credit…Abubaker Lubowa/Reuters

“We don’t even have the capacity or even the tools that we need to actually respond to some of these issues,” he said.

Advertisement

Some organizations dispense medicines to children, which requires more skill than treating adults. Children’s medications are tailored to their age, weight and prior exposure to antiretroviral drugs, and the children must be carefully monitored for drug resistance.

In children who acquired H.I.V. at birth, the infection can progress very quickly to illness, with death occurring as early as eight to 12 weeks after birth — shorter than the 90-day pause on foreign aid.

On Tuesday night, the Trump administration put nearly all of U.S.A.I.D.’s global work force on leave and recalled those posted abroad to return to the United States within 30 days.

“There’s a loss of institutional memory, which may be purposeful, but it’s also creating just a backlog of paperwork, and it’s paralyzing the whole system,” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, the president of Global Health Council, a membership organization of health groups.

“Who do you ask questions to?” she said. “How do you move to the next step?”

Advertisement

Without U.S.A.I.D. staff to process waiver applications, organizations fear they will not see funds anytime soon. Even large global health organizations are struggling to stay afloat; some have already cut programs and staff.

Even if the funds return quickly, it may not be easy to restart programs and return to something resembling normalcy, Ms. Dunn-Georgiou said.

“It costs a lot to restart something, so I don’t think we really know yet if that’s even possible,” she said.

Lynsey Chutel and Stephanie Nolen contributed reporting.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending