BLOODBATH! U.S Axes Lifesaving Aid, Millions Left to Die
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 26, 2025, the State Department in Washington sent out a large number of emails to organizations across the world. These emails reached refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects, and many other groups that depend on U.S. funding for life-saving work.
The emails all contained a brief but serious message:
“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government.”
With this notice, funding was immediately cut for around 5,800 projects previously supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This marked the end of a period of uncertainty when the Trump administration had temporarily frozen these projects for review. Any small hope that the aid might continue was now gone.
Some of these projects had earlier been given special permission to continue because they were considered essential and life-saving. Now, even those were shut down.
Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, the executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, expressed concern, saying, “People will die, but we will never know, because even the programs that track deaths have been cut.”
The canceled projects included crucial health initiatives, such as:
- A $131 million grant to UNICEF for polio vaccinations, which covered planning, logistics, and vaccine delivery for millions of children.
- A $90 million contract with Chemonics to supply bed nets, malaria tests, and treatments, which would have helped 53 million people.
- A program by FHI 360 in Yemen that sent health workers door-to-door to find malnourished children. They had recently found that 1 in 5 children was severely underweight due to war.
- Funding for the Global Drug Facility, which supplies tuberculosis medications through the World Health Organization. Last year, it provided treatment for nearly 3 million people, including 300,000 children.
- HIV treatment programs by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation that served 350,000 people in Lesotho, Tanzania, and Eswatini. Among them were 10,000 children and 10,000 pregnant women receiving care to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
- A project in Uganda that tracked Ebola cases, conducted health surveillance, and safely buried those who died from the virus.
- A contract to manage and distribute $34 million in medical supplies in Kenya. This included 2.5 million monthlong HIV treatments, 750,000 HIV tests, 500,000 malaria treatments, 6.5 million malaria tests, and 315,000 anti-malaria bed nets.
- Eighty-seven shelters in South Africa that cared for 33,000 women who were victims of rape and domestic violence.
- A project in the Democratic Republic of Congo that ran the only water source for 250,000 displaced people in a conflict zone.
- Health services in Nepal that provided pre- and postnatal care to 3.9 million children and 5.7 million women.
- A Helen Keller Intl project in six West African countries that provided medicine to 35 million people for diseases like trachoma and lymphatic filariasis.
- A nutrition program in Nigeria that treated 5.6 million children and 1.7 million women for severe malnutrition. Due to the funding cut, 77 health facilities had to shut down, putting 60,000 children under five at risk of death.
- A project in Sudan that operated the only working health clinics in a large part of the Kordofan region, cutting off all medical care.
- A program in Bangladesh that provided food for pregnant women and vitamin A for children, serving 144,000 people.
- A malaria control initiative called REACH Malaria, which protected 20 million people by providing malaria drugs at the start of the rainy season in 10 African countries.
- A Plan International project in Ethiopia that provided medicine, health care, food for malnourished children, and water for 115,000 displaced people.
- Over $80 million in funding for UNAIDS, the U.N. agency that helps improve HIV treatment worldwide.
- A mosquito control project, called Evolve, that protected 12.5 million people by spraying insecticide and treating breeding sites in 21 countries.
- A program in Uganda run by the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation that provided HIV and tuberculosis treatment for 46,000 people.
- Smart4TB, the main research group working on tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
- The Demographic and Health Surveys project, which collected health data in 90 countries. This was often the only source of information on maternal and child health, malnutrition, reproductive health, and HIV. The project was also critical for government planning and budgets.
The funding cuts mean that millions of vulnerable people worldwide will lose access to essential health services, putting their lives at serious risk.
BLOODBATH! U.S Axes Lifesaving Aid, Millions Left to Die
