Lesotho’ battered by US funding cuts

Despite previous assurances by Health Minister Selibe Mochoborane that Lesotho’s HIV response will cope without US funding, senior officials say testing rates are dropping and prevention programmes have been gutted. Just 12% of Lesotho’s R2.2bn health budget was government-funded last year. More than half of the budget came from USAID and the US Centre for Disease Control. With 93% of USAID funds cut this year, 652 frontline workers have had to be laid off. GroundUp reports that Mochoborane in March stated that the country’s HIV response will survive without support from the US. The US model was ‘too expensive’, he said, and methods would have to be adapted ‘to align with our available resources.’ He was confident that Lesotho would still reach its ambitious HIV prevention and treatment targets by 2030. But senior health officials seemed less confident while presenting to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Pandemics. ‘When you cut community HIV prevention services, you inevitably increase new infections,’ said Dr Tapiwa Turambiswa, who manages the Ministry of Health’s HIV/AIDS programmes.

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