Health initiatives and medical research projects have been closed around the world in response to the cessation of Trump’s 90 days on foreign aid orders.
In Uganda, the national malaria control program has suspended the spraying of the insecticide in village houses and stopped the nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children, Dr. Jimmy Opigo, Program Manager.
Medical species, including drugs to stop bleeding in pregnant women and rewarding salts facing life -threatening infants, cannot reach villages in Zambia because the truck companies that carry them were paid through a service project of the United States for International Development, USAID
Dozens of clinical trials have been suspended in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. Thousands of people listed in studies have medicines, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies, but no longer have access to ongoing treatment or researchers who supervise their care.
In interviews, more than 20 researchers and program managers described the turmoil in health systems in countries throughout the developing world. Most agreed to interview the condition that their names were not published, fearing that speech to a journalist would endanger any possibility that their works could reopen.
Many of those who were asked broke into tears as they described the rapid decades of destruction.
Programs that have been frozen or folded over the last six days have supported the care of infectious disease, providing treatments and preventive measures that help prevent millions of deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. They also presented a compassionate, generous image of the United States in countries where China has increasingly competed for influence.
The Foreign Ministry and USAID did not respond to comments.
Now there will be no one who receives the custody of millions of dollars for vital oxygen systems purchased for programs funded by USAID that support health clinics in some of the poorest countries in the world. Shipments, now in transit, are scheduled to reach ports in the coming days, but employees of these programs have been ordered to stop the work.
On Tuesday night, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio issued an exemption from the freezing funding for “life humanitarian aid”, including a note from the Foreign Ministry called “Basic Medical Rescue”. However, HIV and Tuberculosis therapy programs have been told by their USAID contacts that they cannot repeat the work until they receive written instructions that the resignation is applied specifically to them.
Few were able to receive clarifications on whether and when their work may continue because the contacts assigned to the USAID have either been fired or passed or are under strict instructions so as not to talk to anyone.
Thousands of people have already lost their job as a result of freezing. About 500 USAID employees based in USAID. In the countries of India in Zimbabwe, staff members for health projects were immediately fired. An organization called the International Center for Processing Disease Research, Bangladesh, which is investigating a top assassin of children, attributed more than 1,000 employees this week.
If the resignation announced by Mr Rubio does not apply to their work – as it is likely that it is expected to relieve only a close range of activities – many non -profit groups will not have enough money to pay their employees or maintain supplies. Already, USAID -based organizations have failed to have access to money, even to refund the spending already incurred.
Two -thirds of the president’s malaria initiative, an organization founded by former President George W. Bush, who is the largest donor in Malaria programs and research worldwide, have been fired. These employees were members of the personal contract, because the organization had long -term recruitment for permanent positions and included some of the senior and respectable scientists working in malaria control in the world.
While HIV’s discontinuation of treatment caused a outcry, the suspension of malaria work also immediately endanger lives, a scientist who was a senior official in the president’s malaria initiative for a decade and fired on Tuesday.
Maladia interventions in Africa are carefully designed around the rainy times, the time of which varies depending on the area. The houses are sprayed with an insecticide and children are treated with antithetical medicine during the transmission times of the peak.
“You could reopen the funding floodgates and you will still have children to die months now because of this cessation,” the scientist said.
More than 50 million children received preventive drugs before rainfall last year.
The delivery of rapid testing and malaria drugs in Myanmar, where malaria cases have increased almost ten times to 850,000 in 2023 (the latest available data) from 78,000 in 2019, have been frozen. Some organizations no longer have workers to distribute supplies, even if they were to arrive.
In some parts of the country, over 40 % of cases are of a malaria type that is often fatal in children under 5 years of age. Malaria medicines appear to meet the conditions under the condition of “rescue humanitarian aid, including basic drugs” are included in the resignation, but in the absence of certainty, no one was bold enough to try to release the drugs that are now stuck in the border. .
About 2.4 million anti-barbecue bed nets are located in Asia’s production facilities, which are built to fulfill US-funded orders and to commit to countries across the sub-Saharan of Africa. These contracts are now frozen, because the USAID subcontractor who bought them is not allowed to speak to the manufacturer under the terms of freezing. Eight million more nets are now in the void, the executive director said with the manufacturer.
USAID’s largest project is called a world -wide health supply chain, an attempt to smooth out the supply of supplies for HIV, malaria, mother’s health and other key areas, to make the system more effective and save money. It operates in more than 55 countries where, in many cases, it provides most of the basic drugs. Now the staff of staff has been ordered to stop work except for basic tasks, such as imprisonment of goods in warehouses.
In Zambia, USAID supports the bulk of public health distribution, using the private truck industry to move drugs from a central supply warehouse to seven regional hubs, from which they are taken by trucks, motorcycle and boat in agricultural health centers. It is part of the extensive US support of the Health System in Zambia, one of the poorest countries in the world, and over time it works to build the government’s supply chain capacity.
Since the stop-work order was issued last Saturday, all vehicles carrying health products have stopped. “They have effectively paralyzed Zambia’s public health sector by pulling so abruptly,” said one adviser who worked with the program. Similar US -funded systems, now frozen, have also moved a significant share of basic medical supplies to Mozambique, Nigeria, Malawi and Haiti.
In East Africa, medical researchers working in projects to find ways to stop the transmission of HIV and develop more efficient contraception have been found for explanations to give participants in their clinical trials.
“We have women who try vaginal rings. They already have the rings in them. said a HIV researcher who is a researcher in various clinical trials. “We have a moral obligation to people who volunteer for testing.”
Apoorva Mandavilli They contributed reports.
