Additional Context: “I really have passion for the key population groups. And if there is any interruption in access to services, I also feel hurt. [...] I feel psychologically traumatized. Because I have very many unanswered questions to my clients. Because I really see that we are going to go back to where we came from, where the HIV prevalence within the country used to be…10…[percent], 20…[percent], around there. Yet, at least we had totally managed it with all these efforts. So, that [we’re going back to those times] brings psychological torture to me as a person who has really been supporting them.” — Clinical officer, Uganda

“In fact, I feel so bad […]. People were strong again and now their lives [are] start[ing] to decline. […] It is very hurt[ful]. The children who grew up in our hands, who were brought [to us close to] death and we have grown them up – now they are youth. Some are in the university […]. Now, if they go back to where we got them from – really, it has affected us so much. It’s like a mother seeing [her] children dying of hunger and yet [doesn’t] have anything to feed them. You see someone who [is] declining slowly…. Something should be done.” — AIDS treatment center/NGO executive director, Uganda

This information was first published in an August 2025 research brief by Physicians for Human Rights entitled "On the Brink of Catastrophe: U.S. Foreign Aid Disruption to HIV Services in Tanzania and Uganda.” This research brief draws on 29 oral history interviews, including five focus groups, with doctors, nurses, peer counselors, people living with HIV, key population members, and non-governmental organization staff conducted in Tanzania and Uganda in April 2025. To document the impacts of the U.S. foreign aid freeze and HIV funding cuts, the multidisciplinary study team used purposive and snowball sampling in Moshi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Fort Portal, Kampala, Kasese, and Tororo, Uganda. Participants had explicit control over how personal information was shared, with consent and demographic forms tailored to individual preferences. 

Source: Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)