For the past two months, Elsie has been receiving daily calls from desperate children surviving on HIV treatment whom she is not allowed to help.

The lively 45-year-old aid worker, who did not want to give her real name, used to spend her days visiting hundreds of HIV patients in South Africa's Msogwaba township around 300 kilometres (190 miles) east of Johannesburg.

But since President Donald Trump slashed US foreign aid funding in late January, Elsie has been forced to stay at home, forbidden from contacting her patients.

"I was supporting 380 kids, making sure each and every kid is taking his medication, is virally suppressed, each and every kid is not being discriminated or violated," she recalled.

"We teach them to accept themselves as they are, to know they are loved. I take them as my own children."

The non-governmental organisation she worked for, which she did not want to identify in case of repercussions, supported almost 100,000 people per year including many HIV-positive children, orphans and child-headed households. USAID provided the group with more than $3 million a year........

© International Business Times