Should We Care About People Dying in Africa

If you want to know what medicine was like before the Affordable Care Act, watch the reruns of ER on HBOMax. Watching it, I was stunned by how people were dying because they didn’t have money for healthcare. Then I realized it was situated before Affordable Care Act, so many of the things happening on there are happening again now, like people dying because they have no healthcare. The show is really a gift, because it documents the medical issues that happened during the fifteen years it was filmed.

It is American history in healthcare, and it covers a lot. One of the most important issues it shows is the HIV virus. What it was like to have Aids in Chicago during that time, to not know if you were going to live if you had the virus. How scary a needle stick was. In one episode a woman slept with a man who then told her he was HIV positive, and she tried to commit suicide.

Then Doctors Carter and Kovac started doing humanitarian aid in Congo. In a MUST WATCH EPISODE, (season 10, episode 10), Dr. Carter is dating a woman that is trying to get the AIDS triple therapy cocktail into Africa. She has access to a generic made in India for two hundred dollars a year, where in America it was twelve hundred dollars a month.

In an incredibly powerful scene, she shows Carter a whole room full of 100’s of people with Aids. She states If you don’t have AIDS meds, all these people will be dead. They will ALL be dead.” The hospital situation was a stark contrast to the aids clinic that Carter shows his girlfriend at the County hospital in Chicago.

Then, it all changed when W. Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids relief (PEPFAR) in 2003. This marked a significant increase in funding and attention to the epidemic. After 20 years, PEPFAR has saved an estimated 26 million lives, prevented babies from being born with HIV, and provided treatment to millions. It was the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in the world, and it not only saved lives but changed the trajectory of the GLOBAL HIV epidemic. If you don’t know, when HIV is treated, it is less likely to mutate and create more virulent viruses that may be resistant to current drug. Stopping the treatments is asking to create new super viruses.

Let’s look at today then, shall we? When Doge came into effect in 2025, the Dept. USAID was shut down completely. That means PEPFAR was discontinued. There are immune-deficient people trying to survive without the medicine they so desperately need to survive. ER shows how horrendous the medical situation was in the late nineties in Congo.

Now, Congo is suffering again. On top of lack of PEPFAR, they are having an Ebola outbreak. Except like the last time there was one, during the Obama administration, American Healthcare workers led the fight against Ebola. President Trump has REMOVED AMERICA from WHO (World Health Organization). The people who are the best trained and most focused on Viral outbreaks in the world. You can tell that the program is slipshod, they can’t even get a head count on how many have died from Ebola.

Watch the whole season 10 of ER. It shows a period where America helped the entire world, not just those people who are white, republican or have money. It shows how it was before there was AIDS triple therapy, and how American medicine and innovation were the envy of the world.

With the results of the election in 2024, the first thing the Angels told me was that Millions will die unnecessarily. Many of those deaths are from the stopping of PEPFAR, the caseation of medical and food support. Now, in 2026, we have lost over a million people because of those cuts. It is only the beginning. I don’t even hear anybody talking about it because there are so many other loud noises coming from the administration.

I believe we are all one. That if something happens to someone across the planet, it is felt by those of us here in America. That we cannot think we are better than others so they simply deserve to die. Happiness is created by helping others- what emotion is created by standing by silently and allowing millions to die?

From The Nation Institute of Health:

From The Nation Institute of Health:

 The freezing of US foreign assistance on January 20, 2025, marked a pivotal shift in the funding landscape for global health, including HIV care and treatment. At the time of the funding freeze, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was supporting life-sustaining antiretroviral therapy (ART) for an estimated 20.6 million people with HIV and reaching almost 90 million with HIV testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis (Prep), or comprehensive HIV prevention services, annually.¹ While a limited waiver, granted in February 2025, permitted PEPFAR to resume certain “life-saving HIV services,” such as prevention of vertical transmission, Prep for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and HIV testing,² delays in necessary authorizations and funding uncertainties resulted in disruptions in HIV-related programs, including clinic closures, staff layoffs, and interruptions in HIV-related service delivery, ART drug supplies, and research activities.^3-8 Modeling studies estimate that PEPFAR funding disruptions resulted in more than 120 000 deaths by November 2025, including more than 13 000 child deaths.⁹ Modeling studies suggest that the termination of PEPFAR-supported programs and US-funded tuberculosis (TB) programs could result in 6.6-8.7 million new HIV cases and 4.2-6.3 million AIDS-related deaths by 2029,¹⁰ and up to an 10.6 million TB cases and 2.2 million TB deaths by 2030.¹¹