The initiatives for the health of life and medical research projects have closed all over the world in response to the 90-day break of the Trump administration on foreign aids and stop-working orders.
In Uganda, the National Malaria Controlm suspended the insecticide in the villages’ houses and ceased shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and small children, said dr. Jimmy Opigo, program director.
Medical supplies, including drugs to stop bleeding in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat potentially lethal diarrhea in children, cannot reach the villages in Zambia because the trucking companies that transport them have been paid through a project suspended supply of the United States Agency for International Development, Usaid
Dozens of clinical studies in southern Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. Thousands of people enrolled in studies have drugs, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies but no longer have access to continuous care or researchers who were supervising their care.
In the interviews, over 20 researchers and operators of programs have described the upheaval in health systems in countries all over the world developing. Most agreed to be interviewed on condition that their names were not published, fearing that talking to a journalist would jeopardize any possibility that their projects could be able to reopen.
Many of those interviewed dissolved in tears while describing the rapid destruction of decades of work.
The programs that have frozen or folded in the last six days have supported treatment in the front line for infectious diseases, providing preventive treatments and measures that help to avoid millions of deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. They also presented a compassionate and generous image of the United States in countries where China has increasingly competed for the flu.
The State Department and Usaid did not respond to requests for comment.
Now there will be no one who takes the custody of millions of dollars of supplies for Vitali oxygen systems, purchased for programs financed by Usaid who support health clinics in some of the poorest countries in the world. The shipments, now in transit, are scheduled to reach ports in the next few days, but the employees of these programs have been ordered to stop the work.
Tuesday evening, the secretary of state Marco Rubio issued an exemption for the freezing of the loan for “life -saving humanitarian assistance”, including what a remote from the State Department called “Core rescue medicine”. However, their contacts have been informed that the treatment programs of HIV and tuberculosis said they cannot resume work until they receive written instructions that the renunciation applies specifically to them.
In addition, Tuesday, a federal judge blocked freezing until February 3. But in practice, most of the offices and programs of the country Usaid proceed as if the freezing remained in progress.
They have not been able to obtain clarifications if and when their work can continue because their contacts assigned to USIID have been fired or repaired or are under rigorous instructions not to speak with anyone.
Despite the order of the court, thousands of people have already lost their jobs due to freezing. About 500 employees were offered in the United States. In the countries from India to Zimbabwe, staff members for health projects were immediately fired. An organization called International Center for Diarroal Disease Research, in Bangladesh, which research on a top killer of children, has fired more than 1,000 employees this week.
If the renunciation announced by Mr. Rubio does not apply to their work – as is likely because it is expected that it is exempt only a restricted area of activities – many non -profit groups will not have enough funds to pay their employees or maintain supplies. Yes, the organizations that are based on the USAID funds have not been able to access any money, also for the reimbursement of the expenses already incurred.
Two third parties of the staff of the Malaria of the President, an organization founded by the former president George W. Bush who is the largest donor of anti-malarial programs and research all over the world, have been fired. Those employees were members of the contract staff, because the agency had long had freezing for permanent positions and included some of the most senior and respected scientists who worked on the control of malaria in the world.
While the interruption of the treatment for HIV caused a protest, the suspension of malaria work immediately jeopardizes life, said that a scientist who was a member of the senior staff at the president’s malaria initiative for a decade for a decade And he was fired on Tuesday.
Malaria interventions in Africa are carefully planned around the rains seasons, whose time varies according to the region. The houses are sprayed with insecticide and children are treated with an anti -malarical drug during the transmission times of peak malaria.
“You could open the financing doors again tomorrow and you will still have children who die in months because of this break,” said the scientist.
More than 50 million children received preventive drugs before last year’s rains season.
The delivery of quick tests and Malaria drugs in Myanmar, in which cases of malaria increased by almost ten times to 850,000 in 2023 (the most recent figures available) by 78,000 in 2019, was frozen. Some organizations now have no workers to distribute supplies even if they had to arrive.
In some parts of the country, over 40 percent of cases it has a type of malaria which is often fatal in children under the age of 5. Malaria drugs would seem to qualify under the clause of “life -saving humanitarian assistance, including essential medicines” included in the renunciation, but in the absence of certainty, no one has been quite bold to try to free the drugs now blocked on the Thai border.
About 2.4 million anti-malaria beds are sitting in production plants in Asia, manufactured to satisfy the orders financed by the United States and direct for the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These contracts are now frozen, because the Usaid subcontractor who purchased them is not authorized to speak with the manufacturer according to the terms of the freezing. The contracts for eight million more nets are now in limbo, said a manufacturer’s manager.
Usaid’s largest project is called Global Health Supply Chain, an effort to simplify the supply of supplies for HIV, malaria, maternal health and other key areas, to make the system more efficient and save money. It works in over 55 countries where, in many cases, it provides most of the key medicines. Now to his global staff network he has been ordered to interrupt the work with the exception of essential tasks, such as protecting the raw materials in the warehouses.
In Zambia, Usaid supports the bulk distribution of public health products, using the private road haulage industry to move medicines from a central supply deposit to seven regional hubs, from which they are taken into trucks, motorcycles and boat to health centers rural. It is part of the vast American support of the health system in Zambia, one of the poorest countries in the world, and over time he has worked to accumulate the ability of the government’s supply chain.
Since the stop-work order was issued last Saturday, all vehicles transporting health products have been stopped. “They actually paralyzed the Zambia public health sector by pulling out so abruptly,” said a consultant who worked with the program. Similar systems financed in the United States, now frozen, have also moved an important share of basic medical supplies to Mozambique, Nigeria, Malawi and Haiti.
In Eastern Africa, medical researchers who work on projects to find a way to stop the transmission of HIV and develop a more effective contraception have found themselves in difficulty for the explanations to be given to participants in their clinical studies.
“We have women who test vaginal rings, already have rings, people who have had an injectable for the prevention of HIV – When you say” stop “, what happens to them?” A HIV researcher said who is an investigator of numerous clinical studies. “We have an ethical obligation towards people who offer volunteers for tests.”
Aporva Mandavilli Contributed relationships.