The minister of health Aaron Motsoaledi has urged South Africans who are living with HIV/Aids to continue taking their ARVS amid the pausing of USAID and the surrounding confusion.

Motsoaledi said at the Cabinet Lekgotla meeting that the SA government was not formally told about the pausing of USAID.

"This money, whether from Global Fund or President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) comes through Treasury. Treasury got no letter, health got no letter, Dirco got no letter. We tried to contact the US embassy, and we could not get them. So how do we know that there is this funding withdrawal at all?

"Because the actual NGOs and clinics that are funded by Pepfar were the ones who received letters. But this morning we read again that the Secretary of State has withdrawn and that for the time being, because they say they are going to review for 90 days," he said.

Motsoaledi emphasised that no one should stop taking their ARVs, as this could have devastating consequences "When you are on ARVs and stop, there will be serious trouble.

Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus said on X: "The WHO expresses deep concern about the implications of the United States government’s immediate funding pause for HIV programmes in low- and middle-income countries.

"These programmes provide access to life-saving HIV therapy to more than 30 million people worldwide. This funding halt can put people living with HIV at immediate increased risk of illness and death and undermine efforts to prevent transmission in communities and countries."

Ghebreyesus added that if such policies are implemented indefinitely, they may result in an increase in new infections and fatalities, undoing decades of progress and perhaps returning the globe to the 1980s and 1990s, when millions of people died from HIV each year.

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Minister of health Aaron Motsoaledi urges South Africans to continue taking ARVs amid USAID confusion