Nigeria and other African countries have shut numerous clinics that were funded by USAID following recent funding cuts by US President Donal Trump.
In Nigeria, clinics that once served 300 people a day in the conflict-hit Borno state have abruptly shut down, Adamu Ibrahim, a laid-off nurse, and other laid-off workers told AFP, following the withdrawal of American funding by President Donald Trump.
“The clinics have been closed and (there are) no more free drugs or mosquito nets,” said Ibrahim.
The sudden dismantling of USAID — the country’s main foreign development arm — is unravelling health care systems across Africa that were built from a complicated web of national health ministries, the private sector, nonprofits and foreign aid.
As the effects of the cuts compound, the resulting damage — and deaths — are unlikely to end anytime soon: malaria cases will peak around the end of the rainy season, while threatened American cuts to global vaccine funding would likely be felt later in the year.
Alongside laid-off workers, malnutrition clinics have shuttered doors in Nigeria.
Rattled supply chains mean drugs are at risk of being stuck in warehouses in Mali. Children are walking miles to reach care in South Sudan for cholera care and dying along the way, and refugee camps in Kenya are facing medicine shortages.
“People with resources will be able to go and get drugs… but the poorest of the poor, out in remote areas of Nigeria and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, they’re the ones who will be cut off,” said Lawrence Barat, a former senior technical advisor for the US President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).
“They’re the ones whose children will die.”
Forecasts developed by ministries of health across the continent to plan for the rainy season have deep holes blown in them, said Saschveen Singh, an infectious disease specialist with Doctors Without Borders in France.
In Mali, seasonal malaria chemoprevention drugs given to young children won’t have an issue coming into the country — but American funds were crucial for coordinating their distribution, Singh told AFP.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the USAID-supported PMI was the primary malaria drug and test provider to government health facilities in nine provinces.
“Suddenly, they’ll just not have drugs, and it’s going to be very difficult for other actors to step in,” said Singh, adding her co-workers are “scrambling” to map out where gaps may arise.
In South Sudan, USAID-funded clinics have closed amid a cholera outbreak. Children are walking hours to the next closest treatment centre, with at least five dying along the way in the country’s eastern Jonglei state, British charity Save the Children reported earlier this month.
In neighbouring Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, which hosts more than 300,000 people, protests broke out in March when it was announced rations would be lowered, and doctors are running out of medicine.
“All the clinics around, you can get paracetamol. But all other drugs, no,” one camp elder, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP during a recent visit.
At Kinkole General Hospital, in Kinshasa, doctors were recently treating 23 mpox patients isolated in tents free of charge thanks to American support. But workers have no idea if that funding will continue, despite an outbreak that has infected 16,000 and killed 1,600.
“We’re thinking a disaster is coming,” said Yvonne Walo, an epidemiologist at the centre.
