Read all the way to the end of this excerpt and then get ready to throw something:
Saulo Kasekela died of AIDS on March 7, in a small town called Mpongwe in the copper belt of northern Zambia. He was a 37-year-old security guard, admitted to the mission hospital two days earlier. After his body was wheeled out of the men’s ward, a nurse set aside his chest X-ray, a clouded smear of lungs devoured by tuberculosis, a hallmark of advanced, untreated H.I.V. infection. A scrawled doctor’s note indicated the X-ray should be saved for medical students.
Of the eight patients in the ward that day, four had AIDS. Lewis Chifuta, 33, was bone thin, feverish and barely able to recognize his siblings when they reached his bedside.
A year ago, in Mpongwe, there was one case like this each month, or maybe two. In January this year, there were 28 new cases; in February, 28 more; in March, seven more.
During President Trump’s first month in office, his administration upended much of the flagship global H.I.V. program that had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Zambia. The Zambian government went into emergency mode, desperate to ensure that people with the virus could continue to receive lifesaving medications.
But other crucial aspects of the program had to be scrapped — interventions that had helped stop the spread of the virus and protected the most vulnerable people, those like Mr. Kasekela.
Today, a pared-down system is operating on reduced U.S. support, and Zambia may lose that help entirely in the next few days. The Trump administration has set an April 30 deadline for the Zambian government to accept a new health funding agreement that is tied to giving the United States expanded access to the country’s mineral resources.
I don’t get the sense that there is any remorse on the part of the Trump administration. They’re all “shithole” countries in their minds. But they do have some valuable resources so maybe they might relent just a little bit.
Pure extortion with thousands of lives on the line.