With AID Cutoff, Trump seeps a lifeline for millions

Fund from the richest nation in the world once became a complicated network of small, medium and large organizations from the largest global aid organization that provided help: HIV medication for more than 20 million people; Dietary supplements for starving children; Support for refugees, orphaned children and women who were beaten by violence.

Now this network dissolves. The Trump administration has froze foreign aid for 90 days and plans to extend the US Agency for International Development to only 5 percent of its labor, although a federal judge held the plan on Friday. In view of the wars and the crazy economies, it is unlikely that other governments or philanthropies compensate for the defect again, and recipient countries must be enlarged by debts in order to manage them themselves.

It is unlikely that the largest organizations will be intact. In interviews, more than 25 helpers, former USAID employees and civil servants of aid organizations described a system that was thrown in mass confusion and chaos.

The construction of a tower with blocks can take hours, but “they pull out one of these blocks and he collapses,” said Mitchell Warren, managing director of the HIV prevention organization AVAC, which was based on 38 percent of its funds on USA.

“You have gained all employees, the entire institutional memory, the entire trust and trust, not only in the United States, but also in the dozens of countries in which USAID works,” said Warren. “These things took decades to destroy themselves.”

Small organizations, some of which are folded with only 10 employees. Some medium -sized organizations have triggered up to 80 percent of their employees. Even large organizations – including Catholic auxiliary services and FHI 360, the greatest recipients of USAID financing – have announced large layoffs or primary runs.

In a survey, about 1 of 4 non -profit organizations stated that they could take a month; More than half said they had enough reserves to survive at most for a maximum of three months.

President Trump's announcement increases the damage that the United States would withdraw from the World Health Organization, and forces their leaders to announce their own cost reduction measures.

Global health experts said that the future suddenly looked uncertain, even dystopic, and tried to articulate alternatives.

“We are quite clear that the future looks different,” said Christine Stegling, deputy managing director at Unaids, the HIV department of the United Nations. But “none of us still has a real picture of what that means.”

The damage not only extends to the health of people abroad, but also to American and American companies. Together with the approximately 100,000 positions that were cut overseas, an estimated 52,000 Americans have lost their work in 42 states.

The global market for supply chains in healthcare was rated almost 3 billion US dollars in 2023 and should probably grow. Every year, around 2 billion US dollars were bought as food aid for American agricultural products. The abrupt standstill consists of corn, lentils, rice and others in the course of transport or in storage and ports.

“The economic effects of this will be astonishing life and companies,” said Lisa Hilmi, Executive Director of the Core Group, a consortium of great global health practitioners.

Ms. Hilmi, who worked as a nurse in many conflict and disaster zones, said that a lack of health services could drive poor health, malnutrition, epidemics, citizens' lack and “a much broader collapse of society all over the world”.

“When America is the greatest superpower, we have to act like this,” she said. “And part of it is to act with humanity.”

“Dizziness chaos”

A week after the break of the help, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio gave a waiver of life -saving humanitarian aid and medication. But after the announcement of the waiver, stop work orders for some programs, including food aid, followed.

Last week a large organization received the homepage for some of her programs. But later on the same day, the Trump administration put dozens of USAID officials on vacation, so that the organization was wondering whether the department, which had published the waiver, was still a sustainable unit and the official who wrote the announcement was still was busy.

“It is another example of the dizzying chaos that this administration has added to us,” said a high -ranking official of the organization.

The leaders of most organizations that are dependent on the USAD financing would not speak in the recording because they fear the retaliation of the Trump government.

Even if organizations have received permits to continue, there was no money. A large organization received less than 5 percent of their expected budget for this period, others have not received anything.

“I obviously welcome that the secretary approved a waiver and has a contribution to the Internet, but we cannot pay our bills by post,” said a high -ranking civil servant in a large organization about Mr. Rubio.

Some groups feel morally obliged to continue to offer life -saving services in the hope that they will ultimately be refunded. Since dozens of small organizations that were closed from day to day, some experts are encouraged for some of the most endangered groups in the world.

The ecosystem of global health is so closely interwoven that the break frozen the work itself from organizations that do not receive any money from the US government.

The non -profit IPAs work with hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries to offer access to contraception, abortion and other reproductive health services. Many of the clinics have closed some permanently, said Anu Kumar, the president of the organization.

The speed of the disorder did not allow the clinics to create emergency plans or to rejuvenate their dependence on the financing, and added: “This definitely has a wave effect.”

After a week of freezing, more than 900,000 women and girls are refused to supply reproduction, a number that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, grows to 11.7 million growth over the 90-day break. “This is more than the entire population of North Carolina,” said Dr. Kumar.

As a result, the institute is estimated that 4.2 million girls and women will experience unintentional pregnancies, and 8,340 will die of complications during pregnancy and birth.

Many HIV programs focused on “key populations” with the highest risk, including transgender people and men who have sex with men who are excluded and even criminalized in some countries.

In Uganda, for example, where a hard law against gays can lead to the death penalty for mutual homosexual activity for people with HIV-HIV, non-profit organizations that are financed by the United States were crucial sources for financial and medical support.

“It is something every American should be proud of, but I don't think he knows,” said Kenneth Mwehonge, managing director of the coalition for health promotion and social development, which monitors the quality of other HIV programs in Uganda.

“I don't think they know how much they have contributed and what life they saved and they don't celebrate it enough,” he said. His organization had to let go of 105 full-time employees and community employees.

Immunizations in childhood, the prevention and treatment of malaria and malnutrition are also stalling. So also programs for education, economic strengthening, preventive health services and family planning.

“This is a perfect storm for poor health results without moving,” said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, Executive Director of the Global Health Council, a member organization of health groups.

Some organizations financed by USAID provided clean water and sanitary facilities, especially for refugee populations. Others helped protect governments to protect against diseases such as polio and measles in conflict zones and under nomadic groups. Still others provided expertise to contain the outbreaks of dangerous pathogens such as Ebola and Marburg, which are smoldering in Uganda and Tanzania.

Each of these threats could easily exceed and land on the American banks if they do not contain the borders, said Rebecca Wolfe, who worked for 15 years on the USAID -financed non -profit Mercy Corps and is now a development expert at the University of Chicago.

The world “is so connected and tries to share it in” America First “, and the rest no longer works in age,” she said.

“It feels like grief”

Some USAID employees and aid organizations said that the sudden plug of the financing against the goal is: to help countries become independent enough to take care of their own citizens.

In recent years, USAID has worked on the training of midwives, nurses, doctors, laboratories and hospitals to transfer responsibility.

Self -sufficiency would require small non -profit organizations at local level to provide services, but the smallest organizations are also the least the current storm.

“The irony is that its priority in project in 2025 is to locate large partners and to move away from the big partners,” said Jeremiah Centrella, former General Counsel at Mercy Corps. “But big international partners are the only ones who have access to private donors and have enough balance sheets to get through.”

It is unclear what will happen to the tens of thousands of employees who suddenly have no jobs and no industry to find one.

In Kenya, Mercy Githinji took care of 100 households in the district of Kayole in Nairobi, when the clinic in which she worked was led by the USA's Tumukia Mtoto project. Now Ms. Githinji, a 52-year-old single mother of four daughters, is not sure how to pay rent or school fees.

The clinic ensured medical care, but also helped the residents with rental money, food and sanitary cushions. “Now there is no check, there is nothing,” said Ms. Githinji. “It's very bad. People suffer. “

Even if the help has been resumed next week, clinics and offices have already closed, people have changed and the trust was broken, some former USAID employees said.

Others said they were desperately sad – not for themselves, but for the people they had obliged to serve.

“The only way to describe it is that it feels like grief,” said a former USAID employee.

“Our mission is to save and relieve life,” she said. “If you don't have the opportunity to contribute to it and take it away arbitrarily overnight, it was only deeply heartbreaking.”

Stephanie Nolen has contributed to the reporting.