Since Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails has been sent from the State Department in Washington to thousands of refugee camps, polio vaccination centers, tuberculosis clinics, and other organizations that received funding from the United States of America. The email read, “This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government.”
The brief note sent by the State Department ended the funding of some 5800 projects that the United States Agency for International Development had financially supported. Many of the projects had previously received money from the State Department because the department identified the work as essential and lifesaving.
Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, the executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, said in a statement, “People will die, but we will never know because even the programs to count the dead are cut.” The projects that have been terminated include HIV treatment programs, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected areas in the African continent, and global efforts to wipe polio from the face of the earth.
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Some of the projects terminated, and confirmed by the New York Times, include:
- A $131 million funding allocation to UNICEF’s polio vaccination initiative covers the coordination, distribution, and administration of vaccines to millions of children.
- A $90 million agreement with Chemonics to provide essential malaria prevention and treatment resources, including bed nets, diagnostic tests, and medications, benefiting 53 million individuals.
- A contract overseeing the distribution and management of $34 million in medical supplies across Kenya, supplying 2.5 million month-long HIV treatments, 750,000 HIV tests, 500,000 malaria treatments, 6.5 million malaria diagnostic kits, and 315,000 anti-malaria bed nets.
With this, America has finally moved away from its “Obligations” of being a bearer of the world’s problems.
