The lives torn assunder by Trump's brutal cuts to aid

From a pregnant mother with HIV to a father lying in agony on a mattress with no access to drugs, Bel Trew discovers, in Uganda and Zimbabwe, the painful costs of US desertion

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Leaning in pain against the wall of her one-room hut, Hadja, a mother of three, worries about who will look after her children if she dies.

The 27-year-old was unknowingly infected with HIV by her husband before falling pregnant in her village in southern Uganda. Since the US made devastating cuts to its global HIV programmes in January, slashing funding, she has struggled to access her lifesaving medication – drugs that would crucially prevent the transmission of the virus to her baby.

“When you go to the government hospital, they don’t give you the medicine. There are days we go to the hospitals and there are no doctors, days when they don’t have drugs,” she says, explaining that she earns just £1.50 a day making and selling pancakes – far too little to afford antiretroviral medication on her own.

“Our lives depend on medicine – without it, our lives are shortened. If I die, my children will suffer.”

The worst-case scenario is already playing out in a neighbouring village, where James, 50, a father of four, is also HIV positive. Lying in agony on a mattress on the floor, he is watched helplessly by his niece, Beatrice, who – along with her teenage daughter – also has the virus. None of them have had access to HIV medication for more than a month and a half.

Without antiretroviral drugs, James’s emaciated body is shutting down, infection by infection. Beatrice knows that she and her 14-year-old may be next.

“I’m worried because my daughter has started showing symptoms – her body itches, and sometimes she loses her eyesight,” she says, her voice a whisper. “I am afraid of what may come, and so is my daughter. She keeps asking, ‘How are we going to survive, Mum?’”

In a shocking move during the first few days of his presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order that froze almost all foreign assistance for 90 days while programmes were reviewed to ensure they aligned with “American interests”.