"AIDS is dying, France is looking the other way": Around forty people gathered Tuesday morning in front of the American embassy in Paris to denounce the suspension of American aid to the fight against AIDS and to demand increased support from France.
Activists from Aides, a leading French association in the fight against AIDS, lay on the ground, chanting, among other things, "Don't look away, the dead are at your feet," "Greed and injustice, the United States is complicit," and "AIDS is dying, Trump is looking away."
At the end of January, US President Donald Trump announced the suspension of most foreign aid, including that of the Pepfar program, one of the pillars of the fight against AIDS launched by President George W. Bush in 2003.
For Aides, the suspension of this program, which "represented 60% of global funding in the fight against HIV", constitutes "an immediate and historic threat of epidemic resurgence".
Since the suspension of aid, "an additional 40,000 people have died, it's a health catastrophe," Emmanuel Bodoignet, the association's national vice-president, told AFP, stating that "no virus in the world" is currently causing "so many deaths."
"An epidemic knows no borders. From France, HIV seems far away, but without this funding, it will be here tomorrow," he warns.
"Faced with current challenges," the association considers it essential "that France continues to provide leadership in the fight against HIV and other pandemics."
In particular, it calls on the French authorities to increase public development aid, to allocate revenue from new taxes to international solidarity and to provide "ambitious support" to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
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