Widespread fears over the meaning of the Trump administration’s January foreign aid freeze gave way to shock and despair this week as the US government permanently cancelled funding for nearly 10 000 projects supporting health and development around the world.
Some 5800 of the United States Agency for International Development’s 6200 multiyear awards will be elimination, representing $54bn of aid spending. At the Department of State, 4100 of 9100 grants were eliminated, worth $4.4bn.
Global progress against HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and polio is likely to reverse, aid providers said, at a time when new treatments and vaccines had brought renewed hope of progress.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the flagship US programme to combat HIV/AIDS, and the less well known President’s Malaria Initiative were not spared and many “lifesaving care” projects that were offered temporary waivers in January found themselves permanently cut off. The cuts amount to 90% of the budget of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the main disburser of American foreign aid. Fewer than 70 of 783 staff remain at USAID, following a purge led by Elon Musk, who has described the government agency as a “criminal organisation” and boasted that he is putting it “through the woodchipper.”
The final funding decisions come only a month into a 90 day period during which the administration had said it would review each programme’s costs and benefits.
USAID’s own assessment of the likely damage was leaked over the weekend, in a memo by Nicholas Enrich, the …
