In Malawi, the clinics could soon run out of critical HIV medications, unable to replace their supply since the Trump administration ordered a freezing for foreign aid of the United States. The Pause has stopped HIV programs headed by the United States Agency for International Development, a worker said, potentially impacting about 142,000 girls and young people who received attention from one of the agency’s programs only last year.
“When you suddenly turn off these programs, I hope to see an exponential increase in new HIV infections,” said USAID worker, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals and whose approach was in HIV in women and girls, but it was fired last week. “People who have been living with HIV do not have their medications that keep them virally suppressed so that they do not transmit it to others.”
It is only an example of how the maintenance of the 90 days of the United States in international aid and attempts this week to dismant everyone.
A federal judge said Friday that he will stop a midnight deadline for us to use its workforce to a few hundred more than 5,000. The American district judge Carl Nichols, appointed by Trump, said he would be entering a very limited “temporary restriction order.
More than half a dozen USAID workers told NBC News in interviews with the judge’s order who are already seeing alarming interruptions in the rescue care. In addition to maternal and child health, the USAID focuses largely on the prevention and treatment of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, diseases that affect women and girls at disproportionate rates compared to men and children in some developing areas around the world. The agency is also very involved in services that support gender violence.
“When interrupting these services is catastrophic,” said Sarah Charles Phillips, who previously supervised the USAID Humanitarian Assistance Office.
The worker who focuses on HIV’s efforts said that many people who live with HIV cannot afford to wait.
“The most essential is that, if someone lives with HIV, they are taking medications daily, life medications. They have to be able to obtain those medicines from their clinic, ”said the worker on pause services. “To do that, Usaid needs to be able to take the medicine to the country and then get them from the port to the clinics.”
In response to a question about the implications for women and girls in the midst of agitation in USAID, Anna Kelly, the deputy press secretary of the White House, said NBC News in a statement that “there is no major defender” for The women Trump.
“President Trump ensures that programs financed by taxpayers in USAID align with the national interests of the United States,” Kelly said. “Cut programs that do not align with the agenda that the American people gave them a mandate in November to implement and maintain programs that put the United States first.”
Before the temporary restriction order, the organization was expected to reduce hundreds of the more than 5,000 foreign service officers, public officials and personal service contractors that it currently employs, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
Elon Musk, the boss appointed by Trump of the new government efficiency department, pointed to USAID, describing him as a “criminal organization.” He has promoted conspiracy theories that have alleged that the agency’s programs were masking Biowarfare’s investigation, or that their financing is channeled in the pockets of a few who control the world.
Critics have argued for a long time that the results of the organization are difficult to quantify, the agency has provided little transparency of foreign aid and that it is an example of unnecessary expense. However, defenders say that the agency is a critical life line, which provides often serious resources for childbirth, malaria and education prevention, among other issues, where women and girls are at greater risk. It is estimated that the AIDS and HIV Pepfar initiative, which is implemented Usaid, has saved more than 25 million lives since it was established in 2003, for example. And it does it “efficiently,” the defenders argue, since it represents approximately 1% of the federal budget.
Women and girls three times more likely than men and boys to get HIV in Africa
In sub -Saharan Africa, for example, where it uses it, it supervises the services, including the prevention and treatment of HIV, girls and women aged 15 to 24 are three times more likely to contract the virus than children and men of the same age. Without a sustained job, these gender gaps could only be deepened, many workers fear.
The USAID worker who specializes in HIV -related efforts said that although exemptions have been processed and many programs will resume in Malawi next week, exemptions do not take into account prevention services. This means that the critical treatment of prophylaxis medication prior to exposure, condom services or any behavior or educational program that will not yet be operational.
“Education, economic strengthening are some of the most important factors to reduce the susceptibility of young women and girls to HIV,” he said. “Those are not covered by exemption. They are definitely not happening now. “
Concern for malaria, specifically, as the rainy season begins
Anne Linn, health advisor to the senior community of the president’s malaria initiative led by Usaid who was fired in the agency’s agitation, said that as the contractors were allowed to go and the direct employees were put on permission “Essentially all Malaria’s work stopped at that time.” This has caused anxiety and concern as the rainy season approaches in some regions, since countries have not had time to develop an support plan and pregnant women desperately need attention, he said.
Linn said his initiative receives networks, medications and more to clinics and facilities. Without their work, these facilities will probably run out of supplies, which is particularly worrying in areas such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the initiative covers much of the region. According to centers for disease control and prevention, pregnant women are three times more likely to develop a serious illness than non -pregnant women who acquire malaria in the same geographical area.
“Imagine, a woman who goes to her clinic and hoped to obtain a network because she is pregnant, if it is a network caused by USAID funds, so that is not happening,” Linn said about clinics that run the risk of running out of supplies.
Rose Zulliger, who also works at the PMI as a technical advisor to the Senior malaria, said that the work of the initiative covers 27 countries of sub -Saharan Africa, along with three programs in the subregion of Mekong of Asia. He has been involved in preventive treatments for 5 million pregnant women in a given year. And last year he provided seasonal antipalúdico medications preventive to 14 million children. Now, the measures sensitive to time such as spraying houses with insecticide, which is generally scheduled to start before the rainy seasons, have been eliminated. In Uganda, for example, the National Malaria Control Program has stopped the insecticide of spraying, said the head of the Dr. Jimmy Opigo program.
“A pregnant woman or a mother with her young son who is sick will arrive at the health centers and will not be properly tested, they will not be treated,” Zultiger said about some clinics in sub -Saharan Africa.
The growing gender gap threatens to have important geopolitical implications, said a former USAID official, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. In Western Africa, for example, terrorist activity has increased for some time, while the region has simultaneously had some of the lowest contraceptive use rates and the highest maternal mortality rates. The combination of population growth and instability will only contribute to these terrorist threats, he said.
“Now, getting the Usaid resources from that region means that there will be less, less support for peace builders at the community level that are trying to help reject instability and terrorist threat in their communities,” said the former official . .
And these problems finally affect Americans nationwide, he said.
“When women and girls do not have equal rights, they do not have the opportunities to go to school, access medical care, to go to work, their societies are worse for it,” said the official. “Their societies are less healthy, they are less prosperous. … that contributes to a greater risk of disease outbreaks that will come and potentially spread throughout the world, even to the United States. “
But in the midst of developments that change rapidly throughout the federal government, Linn said it is still essential to continue advocating these services.
“We can still act,” he said. “It’s not too late.”
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