The dire consequences of the US withdrawal of funding to South African health programmes continue, with Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi saying that more than 100 HIV researchers have lost their jobs, which could have a massive impact on hard-earned gains.
Two major entities that reported to the Health Ministry – the SA Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) – both received funding from Pepfar, reports News24.
The SAMRC was awarded a $45.6m grant by USAID under the Brilliant (Bringing Innovation to Clinical and Laboratory Research to end HIV in Africa through New Vaccine Technology) Consortium, which develops and tests novel HIV vaccines in Africa, while the NHLS received R94 657 052 annually from Pepfar.
However, the total funding for the NHLS is R210 594 552 from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.
“Cutting back on the SAMRC research funded under Pepfar will result in job losses for 110 staff, ultimately having a devastating impact on many livelihoods,” said Motsoaledi. Additionally, the SAMRC conducts crucial research on the quadruple burden of disease affecting South Africans, including the critical issue of HIV infections.
“Termination of the Pepfar funding would derail hard-won gains in combatting HIV/Aids infections, and hamper research and development of novel HIV vaccines in Africa by African researchers, and for African communities, (as an) initiative under the Brilliant Consortium,” he said.
It’s not clear how many researchers the department has at its disposal.
Regarding the NHLS, 10 staff appointed to support the Notifiable Medical Conditions (NMC) system and other related surveillance at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) have received stop-work orders.
As a result, the NMC, which is an essential surveillance tool for compliance with international health regulations, will be compromised.
Additionally, NICD and NHLS surveillance activities, which include monitoring conditions like HIV and mpox, will be constrained.
In March, Spotlight and GroundUp reported on how the funding cuts would affect South Africa’s health system, having obtained documents from a presentation by the National Health Department during a private meeting with Pepfar in September.
The documents show that in 2024, the US funded nearly half of all HIV counsellors working in South Africa’s public primary healthcare system. The data exclude the Northern Cape. Overall, the US funded 1 931 counsellors countrywide.
Now that many of them have been laid off, researchers believe fewer people will be tested, meaning new HIV infections will be missed and more treatment interruptions will also occur, leading to more deaths.
Pepfar also funded nearly half of all data capturers, amounting to 2 669 people.
Motsoaledi said it was difficult to indicate contingency plans for the work led by the SAMRC under the Brilliant Consortium.
The NHLS is providing temporary funding for the 10 staff for three months, ending on 30 April, but plans to review the situation and determine how to absorb them and their associated expenses.
The Minister said different sectors of society could play a crucial role in closing these funding gaps identified, “like the Solidarity Fund, which was established during the Covid-19 epidemic, and consultation with the National Treasury to assess the support measures necessary for maintaining essential research and surveillance gaps”.
The SAMRC, meanwhile, has secured commitments of R400m from donor organisations which are willing to help plug the financial gap after the US cut support for scientific research in SA – but only if the government matches their contributions rand for rand.
The SAMRC has consequently increased its bid for emergency funding from the National Treasury from R150m to R400m, according to MRC President Ntobeko Ntusi.
The bid has been made under section 16 of the Public Finance Management Act.
Ntusi told Business Day the funds are critical, as research-intensive universities like UCT and Wits that relied heavily on grants from the US have already set large-scale retrenchment processes in motion.
“There’s … massive panic in the sector,” he said. “Almost all of the principal investigators are employed by the universities, but they have teams of 100 or more employed through research grants.”
Wits Health Dean Shabir Madhi confirmed retrenchments were under way – that 1 815 Wits Health Consortium staff, ranging from researchers to field workers, were already affected and more were likely to follow.
“Considering that SA is only spending 0.6% of (GDP) on research and is below its own target to spend 1.5%, any new injection of funds is welcome. It will be useful in (the) short term to enable researchers to stabilise and avoid a sudden brain drain,” he said.
He warned that a one-off grant would not be sufficient as the sector required sustainable funding to ensure research remained a viable career option.
After the institutions launched an appeal to the Treasury for emergency funding, an MRC meeting with potential donors in late April spelled out the scale of the looming funding gap and the perilous consequences if it were not filled.
The NIH announced on 1 May that it would not renew or issue new “foreign sub-awards” after September. These are NIH funds that a US principal investigator gives to international partners to complete projects, often spanning multiple countries.
SA is the biggest recipient of NIH grants outside the US, and most SA researchers who receive funding from the NIH are sub-award recipients.
The MRC previously told Business Day that the NIH had awarded grants worth more than R1.2bn to SA researchers for this fiscal year. The University of Cape Town received the most grants (155), followed by Wits (110), the University of Stellenbosch (96) and the African Health Research Institute (38).
Science, Technology & Innovation Minister Blade Nzimande, who has until now said little about the threat Trump poses to SA science, announced at the weekend that he was establishing a working group “to consider the issue”. The group will be chaired by his former adviser Derrick Swartz, and has until 30 June to draw up a report.
Business Day article – MRC raises bid for emergency funding as donors step up (Restricted access)
News24 – 110 HIV researchers set to lose jobs in SA after Trump cuts, risking 'hard-won gains'
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
SAMRC’s race to rescue health research in SA
SA scientists reel as US freezes research aid to ‘country of concern’
US stands to lose from funding cuts for top-notch SA research