The State Department said it doesn’t comment on its officials’ communications and briefings with Congress.
While uncertainty about what’s been eliminated and what remains persists, the cuts will damage the foreign aid system, including the programs that the administration may want to keep, said Andrew Natsios, a Republican who ran USAID in the Bush administration.
Dr. Atul Gawande, who ran USAID’s global health programs in the Biden administration, said the funding freeze and terminations are putting the whole program at risk.
“This is the end of PEPFAR as we know it, and if certain issues aren’t addressed, it’s just the plain end of PEPFAR,” he told reporters in a call in late February.
Some global health advocates and lawmakers are holding out hope Gawande is wrong.
“PEPFAR, unlike the health programs that are based at USAID, is based at the State Department; does still have a team there overseeing the program; was given, at least on paper, the ability to continue some care and treatment,” said Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at KFF, a health policy think-tank.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged that it will be difficult for the program to recover from the blows it has suffered over the past few weeks.
“But I’m determined that it’s not the end for PEPFAR. It is too important, too valuable, too effective a program for us to give up on,” he said.