Pastor Billiance Chondwe has known 9-year-old Diana Lungu since she was born. He helped her mother through a rough pregnancy and during Diana’s early years. Diana’s mother died of AIDS when Diana was nearing her third birthday. Diana herself was born HIV positive. After the U.S. issued stop work orders in January, she couldn’t get the drugs she needs to suppress the virus. Chondwe has since helped her register at a government hospital for these medications.
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In April 2025, we published a story with the headline: “Haunted by hopelessness: 12 Zambians share their stories as HIV drugs run out.” It looked at the impact of President Trump’s cuts to foreign aid and his stop work orders on HIV positive individuals. In August, we reached out to them again as well as others who keep close tabs on the HIV/AIDS situation to see where things stand now. This story is part of our annual series “Whatever happened to …”
This year Billiance Chondwe has found himself careening between grave concern for his community and guarded optimism.
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Chondwe — who is affectionately called Pastor Billy by his congregants in Kitwe, Zambia — knows many people who are HIV positive. So, on January 24, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo calling for stop work orders on all existing foreign aid awards, Chondwe watched in horror as many of the U.S.-funded HIV clinics in and around Kitwe suddenly locked their doors.
For Chondwe, that conjured up nightmarish memories of the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, when HIV had decimated his community. The virus claimed the lives of friends and congregants — and, most painfully, his twin sister.
He worried that these closed clinics foreshadowed a return to that reality. “It brought back what we felt [then]: despair, hopelessness. It was like a rewind,” he said in April.
Today that sense of hopelessness has been replaced by a sense of determination and a good deal more hope. While the present is still hard and the future is far from certain, he says, there has been improvement thanks to the Zambian government.
“We are welcomed and we are helped”
After NPR’s story came out, a representative of the Zambian government called Chondwe.
The article had documented how people in Chondwe’s community were going without their HIV medication that suppressed the virus and kept them from getting sick. Some were already reporting such symptoms as weakness, fatigue, fever, sweats and an unpleasant rash — classic signs of the resurgence of the virus.
All the HIV positive people profiled had something in common: They had received medical care from U.S.-funded clinics that were now shut, and they could not find another medical provider. Some had been turned away from other clinics because they weren’t able to obtain their medical records from the closed clinics. Others didn’t know where to go. Still others were too sick to make it to a government hospital.
What followed the article’s publication was a perhaps surprising series of events. At first, Chondwe says, the government’s reaction “was to deny, [saying] that there is no truth in what we were saying.”
Yet this wasn’t an instance of total denial. The government decided to see if they could substantiate the information. Soon officials arrived in Chondwe’s community and asked to meet with many of the people profiled in the article, checking the facts and learning about their situation firsthand.
Chondwe’s sense is that prior to the NPR article, the government genuinely did not realize what was happening in Kitwe. Perhaps, he says, that’s because some other U.S.-funded HIV clinics in Zambia, including in the capital, had been able to reopen shortly after the stop work orders with waivers Rubio issued that allowed them to resume limited services, like dispensing HIV medication. That was not the case in his community.
The Zambian Ministry of Health did not respond to requests for comment about the steps they took after the article’s publication.
Chondwe says conversations with patients convinced the officials to change their attitude. “We gave them proof and then, from there, we saw a partnership,” he says.
Billiance Chondwe — known as Pastor Billy — lost his twin sister, Charity, to HIV/AIDS. After she was diagnosed in 1989, he cared for her at home. She died about two years later. “It brought me to my knees,” he remembers. Today he is an advocate for HIV positive community members who have struggled to get their HIV medication after U.S. foreign aid cuts.
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In mid-June, the officials signed an agreement with Chondwe to help HIV positive community members whose clinics had remained shut. The terms allowed him and a team of volunteers he had assembled to bring these individuals to other facilities: government-run clinics and hospitals. The agreement did not involve any payment or compensation to volunteers.
This arrangement wan a memorandum of understanding. It made the clinics and hospitals aware of the government’s support for the work Chondwe and his volunteers were doing.
As a result, when Chondwe or one of his volunteers brings an HIV positive individual to a health care facility they are able to quickly register as new patients so they can get free HIV medications as they had before — even those who had previously been turned away by government hospitals because they did not have their medical records. Because of the memorandum, Chondwe says, his team can now call officials at the district level if a patient is struggling to get services.
“When we go to any government clinic, we are acknowledged, we are welcomed and we are helped,” Chondwe says.
His team now consists of 38 volunteers — church members and community members. He estimates that they’ve helped connect about 3,000 HIV positive people with new providers and clinics.
Catherine Mwaloe, a teenager in Kitwe who contracted HIV at birth, is one of the people they’re assisting.