Health authorities are calling attention to an imminent consequence of the destruction of the Trump Trump Administration Administration Agency Trump: the risk of a global increase in cases and deaths of tuberculosis.
The World Health Organization warned this week that radical financing cuts could endanger millions of lives, since many countries depend on foreign aid for prevention, tests and treatment of TB.
“Without immediate actions, progress won strongly in the fight against tuberculosis is at risk,” said Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO global program on TB and Lung Health on Wednesday.
Worldwide, tuberculosis is responsible for most deaths of any infectious disease. Around 1.25 million people died of bacterial infection in 2023, the latest available data and new cases reached a historical maximum that year, with around 8.2 million people diagnosed, according to WHO.
Until recently, USAID provided approximately a quarter of the financing of international donors for tuberculosis services in other countries, up to $ 250 million annually, according to WHO. The agency operated tuberculosis programs in 24 countries.
The WHO said that due to funds of the United States funds, drug supply chains in other countries are “decomposing”, laboratory services are “severely interrupted” and surveillance systems are “collapsing”, which makes it difficult to identify, monitor and treat tuberculosis cases. Some research essays have also been stopped.
That has incapacitated some national tuberculosis programs, with the warning of the WHO of devastating impacts in 18 countries with the largest load of diseases, many of which are found in Africa.
In Uganda, the reversal of the USAID funds has made it difficult to pay community health workers, which leads to the lack of personnel, said Dr. Luke Davis, a clinical epidemiologist of Yale’s Public Health School. Such workers play a fundamental role in the notification of people who positive for tuberculosis, receive treatment and evaluate their nearby contacts for infection.
“Patients can obtain a TB diagnosis after leaving the clinic because they are waiting for the results, and may be at home with TB and not know that they have TB. There are literally no resources to go out and reach those people, ”he said. “People are dying because they have a disease that has not been diagnosed, it has not been treated, it has not been prevented.”
Since January 24, the interruption of USAID funds may have led to an estimated 3,400 additional tuberculosis deaths and 6,000 additional infections, according to a project that models the impact of the cuts. The model is coordinated by Stop TB Partnership, a United Nations Organization that aims to eliminate tuberculosis as a public health problem.
Any increase in the spread of the disease could affect the United States, since it would allow more people who live or travel abroad to bring the disease. Already, the cases of tuberculosis in the US have increased: the centers for disease control and prevention registered more than 9,600 cases in 2023, an increase of almost 16% of the previous year and an increase of 9% over prepaid levels in 2019.
A persistent outbreak in Kansas has led to 68 active cases since January 2024.
“What happens when we travel abroad? I know the military and women who return with TB resistant to multiple drugs after a service route. I know the bankers, people from Silicon Valley who work abroad, return with the disease, ”said Dr. Kenneth Castro, a global health professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Emory.
“The problem with all these infectious diseases is that they know no borders, and neither our efforts should be stopped at the border,” he said.
In part, a resurgence of tuberculosis in the United States was attributed from 1985 to 1992, in part, to a decrease in tuberculosis control programs and the increase in global cases.
The White House did not provide a time comment for publication.
People with active TB generally develop a bad cough and chest pain. They can cough blood and mucus and have breathing difficulties. It was not treated, bacterial infection can damage the lungs and spread to other parts of your body, such as brain, kidneys and spine. It can be fatal for up to two thirds of people with active cases that are not properly treated, according to WHO.
But treatment is not a quick matter: patients with tuberculosis should generally take antibiotics for six months, and stop in the middle can lead a person to be resistant to antibiotics, then spread that voltage of TB resistant to drug resistant to others.
Even recent cuts, USAID had been fundamental for surveillance to identify new cases of tuberculosis, improve supply chains to bring medications to patients with patients and invest in clinical trials for new therapies and diagnostic tests. In the communities that lacked radiologists to read radiographs, USAID also financed portable X -ray systems that use artificial intelligence to make diagnoses.
In addition, the agency helped countries acquire medications at lower costs, partly when financing the global drug center, a group that negotiates the prices of medicines with suppliers.
Many of those efforts stopped when the Trump administration stripped Bare Bones to the agency. After shooting or suspending contractors in January, the Administration dismissed 1,600 employees, then placed more administrative license last month. The State Department cut almost 5,800 of the USAID foreign aid awards, more than 90% of the total, according to a demand filed by non -profit organizations and companies that receive USAID funds. The awards totaled $ 54 billion, according to Associated Press.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, issued an exemption in January that allowed the humanitarian programs that save Usaid’s life, including the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, to continue, despite a freezing of 90 days in foreign aid. But in a memorandum to employees last month, a USAID official said that almost all the necessary funds to maintain those programs in motion had been completed.
The officer warned of “preventable death, destabilization and threats to national security at a mass scale”, then put on administrative license after sending the memorandum.
The USAID reduction has been part of the broadest effort to reduce federal expenditure led by Elon Musk and the Government’s efficiency department. Musk said in X last month that he was “feeding USAID to the wooden splinter”, and that he and Trump agreed that the agency should be closed.
Until now, federal judges have denied the requests of the USAID employees and contractors to continue their work, while the demands challenge their terminations are developed. The Supreme Court on Wednesday, said the Trump administration had to pay USAID contractors $ 2 billion for the work already completed.
WHO aims to reduce tuberculosis cases by 80% and deaths by 90% by 2030. That was already aspirational, but now it is even more out of sight, said Dr. Priya Shete, associate professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
USAID played an important role in obtaining diagnostic tools and treatments in the “last mile” to patients, Shete said. That included finding ways to transport medications when road conditions were poor and finance mobile clinics that offered radiographs and bacterial tests.
“The loss of resources to cross the finish line is what is really disturbing for some people, and will end up costing millions of lives potentially,” he said.
Experts are concerned with the interruption of clinical trials will also hinder the development of treatments for drug -resistant infections and new ways of detecting cases in children, which are often difficult to diagnose.
“Innovations return and also benefit the United States,” said Davis.
