Cuts to PEPFAR, the country’s emergency plan for HIV and AIDS relief, have resulted in an estimated 40,000 deaths overseas, analysis shows.
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 17, 2025 — It took Peter Staley two weeks to build 200 full-sized coffins. The longtime AIDS activist, with a group of volunteers, fashioned them out of black styrofoam and strapped them together with tape and velcro. On Thursday morning, the volunteers stacked coffins 10 layers deep outside the State Department headquarters to protest funding cuts to the global program known as PEPFAR, or the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
“We could see five million deaths in the next five years unless the spigots turn back on — fully, fast,” said Staley, one of the country’s most prominent AIDS activists of the 1980s and ’90s. As a trio of drummers played a funeral march, the procession continued. People dressed in black silently walked back and forth to set down each coffin, some carrying them in pairs. Each one represents 100,000 patients who are on medication provided through PEPFAR and whose lives are at risk under funding cuts, he said.
Read the full news story at The 19th*.
SEE ALSO:
- Washington Blade: HIV/AIDS activists protest at State Department, demand full PEPFAR funding restoration
- Gay City News: HIV/AIDS activists hold ‘funeral’ protest against PEPFAR freeze
Source : The 19th*
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