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for employees President Donald Trump celebrated the administration 90 percent of USAID’s work ended with a cake According to a report, despite warnings, lakhs of people will die due to the cuts.
A month into Trump’s second term, an inexperienced team led by Marine veteran Peter Marocco and 28-year-old Jeremy Levin, who had no prior government or aid experience, began cutting U.S. Agency for International Development programs. ProPublica Informed.
By the end of February, once the allies were on track to finish 90 percent of the work done by USAID, the world’s largest humanitarian donor, they celebrated with congratulatory speeches and a sheet cake.
The impact of the cuts was felt immediately. A few days after news of the cuts, a clinic in a remote part of South Sudan at the center of a massive cholera outbreak said it would close.
Run by Christian, Maryland-based humanitarian organization World Relief and funded by USAID, the clinic saved more than 500 people from the deadly disease, which is caused by poor sanitation.
While the Trump administration promised to continue or restore essential lifesaving programs affected by the cuts, it did not do so. Diplomats and government experts around the world warned Trump officials that getting rid of the funding would result in countless deaths.
Nevertheless, Trump appointees and Department of Government Efficiency employees “cut programs in ways that guarantee widespread harm and death in some of the world’s most desperate situations.” ProPublica Wrote in his report.
Independent The State Department has been contacted for comment.
The sudden cuts did not leave aid workers and communities enough time to find other sources of money, food or medicine. The official death toll in South Sudan has reached nearly 1,600, making it the worst cholera epidemic in the country’s history. However, this figure is likely much lower than the actual death toll, according to the outlet, which says they found “newly dug, unmarked graves” in the area.
Tibor Nagy, who was Trump’s acting secretary of state for management until April, was critical of the number of nonprofits funded by American taxpayers – but said Trump’s team did not care to distinguish between “fluff” and important humanitarian efforts.
“This was the most foolish operation I have seen in my 38 years with the American government,” Nagy told ProPublica. “Who knows how much damage was done.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that no one died as a result of the cuts to US foreign aid and that his staff restored life-saving functions, but ProPublica The report found that this was not the case.
While those key programs remained on the books, funding did not resume for months, if ever. Additionally, several key programs running on year-long grants expired without renewal, according to the report.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest and poorest country, is heavily dependent on US aid.
USAID needed less than $20 million to finance life-saving health programs in the struggling country for three months at the beginning of the year – three percent of its budget for South Sudan last year. According to reports, funding was denied and delayed for months, and people died in South Sudan as a result
“We had to start rationing life-saving interventions,” said Lanre Williams-Aydun, senior vice president of international programs for World Relief. ProPublica“For something like this to happen in a place where there’s no mechanism for backup, it means people are going to die,”
According to the report, cholera cases were decreasing in South Sudan, but after the funding was stopped, they started increasing.
A senior State Department official said ProPublica According to the report, the changes were necessary to reform the “calcified system” and that these changes would subsequently benefit both the US and the world.
No one died as a result of funding cuts, official said ProPublica“This is disgusting framing.”
“There are people all over the world all the time who are dying in terrible circumstances,” the official said.
“Who is responsible for the suffering of the people of South Sudan?” The officer added. “South Sudanese [government leaders] Who take their oil revenues and buy private jets and fancy watches and don’t look after their own people? Or the United States? Are we responsible for every poor person around the world?”
With the cuts, more than 5,000 USAID programs were canceled, leaving fewer than 1,000 programs remaining. However, according to reports, even the remaining programs were not receiving money. The remaining programs were later absorbed by the State Department.
According to a report published by researchers in the Lancet medical journal, the aid cuts could lead to more than 14 million deaths by 2030. BBC reported.
The report’s authors described the numbers as “shocking” and warned that a third were children at risk.
The closure of USAID, founded in 1961, has been widely condemned by humanitarian organizations around the world. Further cuts in foreign aid would also impact HIV and AIDS programs.
The world was on track to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Unprecedented cuts are being detected in The Independent’s documentary, death sentenceabout the deadly effects of the fall of U said Funding.