- The Guardian
- Issue #2134
Women and children are already dying as a result of the Musk/Trump administration shutdown of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). According to Abby Bloom who worked on women’s and children’s health programs for almost a decade with USAID, the program has been instrumental for nearly 50 years in advancing women’s health, economic empowerment, and rights. The US government was the single-largest aid donor in the world, according to the United Nations, accounting for more than 40 per cent of all humanitarian aid 2024.
“People are being turned away from health clinics and hospitals, denied life-saving medications and even abandoned by the doctors and scientists overseeing the clinical trials in which many women courageously volunteered,” Bloom said. These programs funded hundreds of not-for-profit organisations in developing countries, in crises, and in conflicts. USAID also funded reproductive health services globally. Its family planning programs have offered contraception, maternal health care, and HIV treatment to millions.
“I had … opportunities to witness firsthand the tenuous lives of women in poor countries ranging from Senegal to Sudan, Bangladesh to Mongolia, the West Bank and Gaza to rural Peru and Honduras. This tragedy is rolling out on multiple fronts but women are worst affected.”
Bloom managed women’s and children’s health programs and water and sanitation projects in rural Panama for four years, and developed USAID’s first Women and Development national strategy. Bloom then spent six years working for USAID in the State Department, in charge of USAID’s health, water and sanitation policy globally. “I know from firsthand experience what is happening and the toll it will take,” Bloom said. “I have seen the dynamics when services are suspended, or medical supplies are only available on a user-pays basis. The blanket closure of critical services for women is already having a dire impact around the world.”
Bloom outlines some of the key impacts on women that can be expected. These include:
- Increased maternal mortality, unintended pregnancies, and the spread of sexually transmitted infections
- The embargo on delivering antimalarial mosquito nets means malaria among pregnant women surges, leading to low birth-weight babies at long-term risk and preventable child death
- Neonatal and childhood vaccinations defunded means resurgence of lethal diseases almost unknown in Australia, such as measles, polio, and tuberculosis.
- HIV/AIDS medications cut off means new suffering and death among those previously stabilised. The spread of HIV/AIDS will accelerate, orphaning growing numbers of children.
- Prenatal care is cancelled leading to widespread complications in childbirth and preventable maternal deaths
- Food supplies stop causing malnutrition and starvation. Mothers deliver vulnerable underweight infants and are helpless to save their weak and starving children.
- Young women are denied education, limiting their future opportunities, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty
- Research into life-saving therapies and treatments are abruptly halted with a shutdown of USAID-supported development of medications for neglected (meaning not profitable enough) tropical diseases.
The shutdown of USAID leaves a huge hole in aid funding. The Australian government should use its ‘special relationship’ with the US to lobby for restoration of US aid. Australia could also increase its own contribution a lot. ,This could come out of the obscene expenditure on killing machines and nuclear submarines. Australia is a rich country. It should be contributing billions, not millions of dollars.
Guardian readers can do something to help fill that void by donating to Union Aid Abroad (APHEDA) – the trade union program – and UNICEF Australia.
