One of South Africa’s leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the fight against tuberculosis (TB) and HIV has been forced to retrench part of its staff after US President Donald Trump imposed a 90-day pause on all US funding to foreign countries and organisations.
The pause is among several executive orders Trump signed immediately after being sworn in as the 47th president of the US on January 20th.
He stated that he wanted to assess whether these funds align with his foreign policy. Among the affected funding agencies are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
With TB HIV Care receiving funding from these agencies, the organisation has had to cut down on its staff. This was outlined in a memo sent to affected staff dated 30 January 2025 and signed by Chief Executive Officer Professor Harry Hausler, who is based in Cape Town.
TB HIV Care provides healthcare services across seven provinces and 25 districts in South Africa. Its programmes are designed to address challenges, gaps, and inequities in the country’s health sector, ensuring South Africa meets global targets to eliminate TB and HIV as public health threats by 2030.
Given funder requirements, we have to request that all staff urgently return funder assets to the office where you are based from this morning. Kindly uphold routine administrative processes in this regard, since all employees could be formally held accountable for not complying with this request,” the NGO stated in the memo to affected staff.
The memo also informed staff that their January salaries would be their last payment.
“Remuneration for the month of January 2025 was processed was processed earlier in the month and this will therefore be your final salary at present. Under the US president’s executive order, TB HIV Care is unfortunately not authorised to process and prospective expenditure under the CDC/PEPFAR grant mechanism,” the NGO said.
The organisation also urged employees to refrain from commenting about the matter on social media or in public forums, as this could undermine lobbying efforts to have the funding reinstated.
TB HIV Care’s Communications Manager, Aziel Gangerdine, said that to maintain the integrity of the process and manage the implications of the Stop Order on the NGO’s workforce, no further details could be shared at this time.
On 29 January 2025, South African Minister of Health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi told the media in Pretoria that Trump’s pending review is expected to leave 15,145 employees of various NGOs in South Africa without jobs.
Earlier this week, the Maternal, Adolescent and Child Health Institute (MatCH), an Indigenous South African public-benefit organisation that provides HIV and TB-related technical assistance, capacity building, and direct service delivery support to improve access to care, client outcomes and health services management, instructed its staff to stay at home while awaiting further clarity on Trump’s next move.
