How Cameroon struggled to save its malaria program after the US cut key funding

Abdul Aziz Adamou hurriedly carried his son Mohammadou through the crowded hospital, and the child did not move. Mohammadou, a tiny three-year-old, was so sick that he barely blinked when a nurse pricked his finger and squeezed out a drop of blood for a malaria test. His mother, Nafisa, watched, her long blue veil fluttering as she shifted nervously.

The day before he had vomited and was drenched in feverish sweat; At night, cramps made his small limbs stiff. At daybreak, his parents got on the family motorcycle and drove him 20 miles along bumpy dirt roads to a hospital in the town of Maroua in northern Cameroon.

The malaria test was positive. Within minutes, a health advisor gave him an injection of artesunate, the World Health Organization’s recommended first-line treatment for the disease.

Over the next 24 hours, Mohammadou received two more injections and became alert enough to express his displeasure. Mr. Adamou grinned and picked him up to hold him still. After three days he was well enough to go home.

The life-saving drug was provided by the United States as part of a program that has dramatically reduced malaria mortality rates here and across Africa. In February, the Trump administration halted much of that program, saying most of the foreign aid had been wasted. The supply of artesunate decreased. When Mohammadou got it a few weeks ago, it was almost as valuable as gold in northern Cameroon.

This region has one of the highest rates of malaria deaths in the world. But hard work and American help reduced the rate in the far north by almost 60 percent from 2017 to 2024. But this year, tumultuous events far away in Washington threw the work into chaos, left more children sick, parents frightened and the health experts who built this program working desperately to save what they could.

The fact that Mohammadou received artesunate is a testament to the commitment of local health workers, many of whom worked unpaid for months; some last-minute emergency funding from a few new benefactors; and not a little luck.