Asanda Zondi received an amazing phone call last Thursday, with commands making her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she participated in a research study that tests a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. contamination.
The trial ended, a nurse told her. The device, a silicone ring inserted into its vagina, had to be removed immediately.
When Mrs Zondi, 22, arrived at the clinic, learned why: The US Service for International Development, which funded the study, had withdrawn financial support and had issued a stoppage order for all organizations around the world receiving the Her money. The sharp move was followed by an executive command by President Trump to freeze all foreign help for at least 90 days. Since then, Trump’s administration has taken steps to completely disassemble the organization.
Ms Zondi’s trial is one of the dozens that have been frozen abruptly, leaving people around the world with experimental medicines and medical products in their bodies, they get from researchers who have been watching and creating waves of suspicion and fear.
The Foreign Ministry, which now oversees USAID, responded to a request for comments, directing a journalist to usaid.gov, which contains no information except that all permanent employees have been placed on administrative license. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said the organization is wasted and promoted a liberal agenda that contradicts President Trump’s foreign policy.
In interviews, scientists-who are prohibited by the terms of the interruption order to speak with the media-write the agonizing choices: they violate the interruption commands and continue to take care of the test volunteers or leave them alone to deal side effects and damage.
The United States is signing Helsinki’s statement that determines the moral principles on the basis of which medical research should be conducted, demanding researchers to take care of participants throughout the trial and report the results of their findings in the communities where tests were conducted.
Mrs Zondi said she was embarrassed and scared. He spoke with other women who had volunteered for the study. “Some people are scared because we don’t know exactly what the reason was,” he said. “We do not really know the real reason for the cessation of the study.”
The stop-work command was so immediate and sweeping that the research staff would violate it if they helped women remove the rings. But Dr. Leila Mansoor, a scientist with the Center for the South African Research Program (known as Caprisa) and a trial researcher, decided that she would do so with her team anyway.
“My first thought when I saw this class, there are rings on people’s bodies and you can’t leave them,” said Dr. Mansoor. “For me morals and participants come first. There is a line.”
In the communities where its organization is working, people have been volunteering for more than 25 years to test treatments, prevention products and vaccines, contributing to many of the basic discoveries in the field and benefiting people worldwide.
This project was based on a carefully constructed web of trust that has now been destroyed, Dr. Mansoor said. The construction of this confidence took years in South Africa, where the apartheid regime conducted medical experiments in blacks during the years of white domination. These fears echo in a long history of experimentation by researchers and pharmaceutical companies in developing countries and marginalized populations in the United States.
Times have identified more than 30 frozen studies that have already volunteers in the care of researchers, including tests:
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malaria treatment in children under 5 years in Mozambique
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Treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
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A method of display and treatment for cervical cancer in Malawi
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Tuberculosis Treatment for Children and Adolescents in Peru and South Africa
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Nutrition support for children in Ethiopia
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Early childhood development interventions in Cambodia
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Ways to support pregnant and mammalian women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
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MRNA vaccine technology for HIV in South Africa
It is difficult to know the total number of tests that are closed or how many people are affected because the rapid demolition of USAID in recent days has deleted the public archive. In addition to the disabled site, the organization no longer has a communications department. And the interruption order forbids every implementing agency to speak publicly about what happened.
In England, about 100 people have been vaccinated with an experimental malaria vaccine in two clinical trials. Now, they no longer have access to clinical trial staff if this vaccine had to cause an unwanted reaction to their body. Testing is an attempt to find a next -generation vaccine better than what is now used in Africa. This shot protects children against one third of malaria cases, but researchers hope to find a vaccine that has offered much more protection. Malaria remains a leading world killer of children. 600,000 people died from the disease in 2023, the latest amount available.
If the test was not frozen, the participants would come to a clinic to be monitored usually for adverse physical effects and to have blood and cell samples to determine if the vaccine worked. Participants must be followed for two years to evaluate the safety of the vaccine.
A scientist who worked in trial said he hoped that the partners at the University of Oxford, where they were conducted, were mixing staff to answer if a participant became ill. But it was fired last week and no longer has access to any information about the trial. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared that she jeopardized her ability to work for the malaria research that the US could carry out in the future.
“It is unethical to try anything in people without getting it in complete completion of the studies,” he said. “You put them in danger for no good reason.”
If the attitude order will come later this year, the newly acquired volunteers could be in an even more precarious position. They were planned to infect them deliberately with malaria to see if their experimental vaccine protects them from the disease.
Dr. Sharon Hillier, a professor of reproductive infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, was up to 125 million dollars funded by USAID to test the safety and effectiveness of six new HIV prevention products. They included bilateral injections, rapid solutions vaginal inserts and vaginal rings.
With the suspension of the study, she and her colleagues cannot process biological samples, analyze the data they have already collected or communicate with the findings either to participants or in government agencies affiliates in countries where the tests were carried out. These are demands under Helsinki’s agreement.
“We have betrayed the confidence of the Ministries of Health and Regulatory Services in the countries where we worked and the women who agreed to be in our studies, who told them they would take care of them,” said Dr. Hillier. “I have never seen this in my 40 years of international research. It is unethical, it is dangerous and it is reckless.”
Even the tests not funded in whole or part by USAID have been thrown into turmoil because they used medical or development infrastructure supported by the Agency and no longer operating. Millions of dollars from US taxpayers’ funds that have already been spent to start these tests will not be restored.
Holidays also have business consequences. Many of these tests were corporate relationships with US drug companies, tasting products that hoped to sell abroad.
“This has made it impossible for pharmaceutical companies to research these countries,” Dr. Hillier said.
Another HIV test, called Catalyst, has thousands of volunteers in five countries that test a injectable drug called long -acting Cabotegravir. Participants received bi -monthly injections to maintain a sufficient level of the drug in their bodies to prevent HIV infection. Without regular injections or a carefully managed end to the use of the drug, participants will not have enough beard Drug -resistant, said Dr. Kenneth Ngure, president of the international company AIDS.
This is a significant threat to test volunteers and also for millions of people living with HIV, because Cabotegravir is closely linked to a drug already used worldwide in standardized virus therapy. The development of resistance could be devastating, Dr. Ngure said: “It’s wrong on so many levels – you can’t just stop.”
A clinical trial conducted by the FHI 360 Development Organization, which has implemented many health programs and studies funded by USAID, tests a biodegradable hormonal implant to prevent pregnancy. Women in the Dominican Republic had the devices in their bodies when USAID funding was cut off. A spokesman for the organization, who started over a third of her US -based staff this week, said he had taken other resources together to ensure that participants would continue to take care.
Another test, in Uganda, tests a new form of tuberculosis treatment for children. The stop-work command cuts these children from potential rescue drugs.
“You can’t walk away from them, you just can’t,” said one researcher in this trial.
