NGOs fear deadly impact from White House aid cuts

A series of sweeping cuts to lifesaving humanitarian and development assistance by the United States is having deadly consequences and destabilizing the global aid system, humanitarian organizations warn.

According to the global humanitarian organization Oxfam, projections based on cuts indicate that if they continue, a child under five could die every 40 seconds by 2030. This would mark the first increase in global under-5 mortality recorded this century, reversing decades of progress in public health.

The US freeze on aid and the closure of the US Agency for International Development last year have left millions without access to food, clean water, healthcare and other essential services.

In the following months, chaotic bureaucratic measures and additional rollbacks stripped billions of dollars set aside by Congress from the humanitarian budget, forcing critical programs to scale back or shut down.

While organizations welcome a recent pledge of $2 billion by the US to the United Nations for humanitarian assistance, Oxfam said it represents only a fraction of the funding previously cut, and uncertainty remains over whether additional support will follow.

Abby Maxman, president and chief executive officer of Oxfam America, said the organization has "run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" after the US took a sledgehammer to global aid programs.

"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die from preventable deaths because of these cuts." She shared stories from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where women and girls were forced into sex work for survival.

"Water-borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," she said.

A recent study in The Lancet Global Health estimated 10.3 million children in sub-Saharan Africa have lost a parent to HIV-related causes. Researchers warned that cuts to the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief could result in another 2.8 million children losing their parents to the virus.

In a statement published earlier this month by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in US, Boghuma Titanji, an HIV specialist and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, said reduced access to antiretrovirals not only jeopardizes patients' viral suppression but can also promote drug resistance when supplies are rationed.

"They are taking one pill every three days to stretch out the supply," Titanji said. "So the virus is being exposed to a less-than-therapeutic dose of the drug and able to more easily select for drug-resistance mutations and overcome the effect of the drug."

Marie Stopes International, a global NGO providing sexual and reproductive health services, reported that US aid cuts have forced many partner organizations to close and disrupted supply chains for essential healthcare services.

Pester Siraha, country director of Marie Stopes International's Zimbabwe program, said aid cuts forced them to abruptly end the program providing free contraception to remote communities.

edithmutethya@chinadaily.com.cn