Trump Ends Funding for Malaria, Other Global Health Programs

The Trump administration has ceased funding for roughly 5,800 global health programs, including those that support providing vaccines, life-saving medications, and emergency health care to millions of people around the world.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department began sending out a wave of emails informing thousands of health groups, refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, and polio vaccination projects that they would no longer receive funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), per the New York Times.

The funding was distributed to a wide range of programs, including those for HIV treatment, malaria prevention in Africa, and maternal health care in Nepal.

More major projects now canceled due to the funding cut include: a $90 million malaria prevention contract, a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that provided water for 250,000 displaced people living in conflict zones, HIV care and treatment in Lesotho, Tanzania, and Eswatini run by Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, a $34 million medical supply management contract in Kenya, 87 shelters in South Africa that support thousands of women who have survived rape and domestic violence, a Yemen community health program in Yemen that identified malnourished children, and a severe acute malnutrition treatment project in Nigeria that serves millions of children and women.

“People will die, but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut,” Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, said in a statement.