Last week, the House and Senate voted against President Donald Trump’s proposal to take back $400 million allocated to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as part of his rescissions bill.

It comes just months after Trump slashed aid to several countries, including USAID funding for HIV/AIDS programmes in South Africa.

There has been speculation that the outcome of the vote could lead to funding being reinstated here at home, allowing HIV programmes that previously had to close to resume operations.

But Mia Malan, the Editor-in-Chief at Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, says that is not the case.

" It's still bad to have the rescissions bill , but it's good that a small part of that was removed for HIV. But that does not mean that the cuts that President Trump made are reversed. It's not the same pot of money.

"So it's good news that activism has gained traction to get some Republicans on board  to go against President Trump, but that's not the same money that was used to cut down programs in South Africa. So our programs are not going to reopen."

Malan says Trump’s limited waiver for PEPFAR remains in place.

It means that funding at this stage can only be used on pregnant or breastfeeding women, to prevent their babies from getting infected.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi confirmed that Treasury had allocated around R750 million to fill the gap, created by the funding gap.

" To give you an idea of how little money that is, our budget for this year from PEPFAR, we would've gotten just under R8 billion. So it's about a 10th of the money that we would need to fill up all the gaps of PEPFAR money, but it's a start. And nowhere in the world has any country managed to find enough money to fill the PEPFAR gaps."

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