US aid cuts halt HIV vaccine research in South Africa, with global impact

Johannesburg: Just a week had remained before scientists in South Africa were to begin clinical trials of an HIV vaccine, and hopes were high for another step toward limiting one of history’s deadliest pandemics. Then the email arrived. Stop all work, it said. The United States under the Trump administration was withdrawing all its funding.

The news devastated the researchers, who live and work in a region where more people live with HIV than anywhere else in the world. Their research project, called BRILLIANT, was meant to be the latest to draw on the region’s genetic diversity and deep expertise in the hope of benefiting people everywhere.

But the $46 million from the US for the project was disappearing, part of the dismantling of foreign aid by the world’s biggest donor earlier this year as President Donald Trump announced a focus on priorities at home.

South Africa has been hit especially hard because of Trump’s baseless claims about the targeting of the country’s white Afrikaner minority. The country had been receiving about $400 million a year via USAID and the HIV-focused PEPFAR. Glenda Grey, who heads the Brilliant program, said the African continent has been vital to the development of HIV medication, and the U.S. cuts threaten its capability to do such work in the future.

Significant advances have included clinical trials for lenacapavir, the world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, recently approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration. One study to show its efficacy involved young South Africans. “We do the trials better, faster and cheaper than anywhere else in the world, and so without South Africa as part of these programs, the world, in my opinion, is much poorer,” Gray said.

She noted that during the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa played a crucial role by testing the Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines, and South African scientists’ genomic surveillance led to the identification of an important variant. A team of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand has been part of the unit developing the HIV vaccines for the trials.

Inside the Wits laboratory, technician Nozipho Mlotshwa was among the young people in white gowns working on samples, but she may soon be out of a job.