The U.S. House of Representatives vote to approve the Trump administration’s proposed rescissions package – clawing back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending, including $8 billion for foreign aid – will have immediate, profound, and devastating consequences on global health, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said today.
“The rescission bill and broader cuts to global health funding are removing the U.S. government’s most effective tools to address public health and humanitarian challenges faced by the world today, from infectious diseases to conflict-related sexual violence to maternal mortality to forced displacement,” said Tom McHale, MS, director of public health at PHR. “The reductions in previously approved U.S. funding threaten to roll back decades of progress in global health.”
PHR has documented how U.S. funding cuts in Ethiopia have led to preventable deaths, shuttered health clinics, and limited access to medical services. PHR has received reports from medical and human rights partners around the world that the U.S. funding cuts are causing severe damage to health systems and humanitarian response.
“Governments of course have the prerogative to withdraw aid. But the sudden, arbitrary and capricious way that the Trump administration cut funding – without any warning or time for affected populations, humanitarian actors, or health workers to plan alternative arrangements for life-saving services – is having particularly cruel consequences around the globe,” said McHale.
The rescissions bill will exacerbate the already dire impacts being felt globally by the Trump administration’s executive orders in January, which imposed a 90-day freeze on foreign aid while launching a comprehensive review of all aid programs as well as a stop-work directive that paused most U.S. aid-supported projects worldwide, with only a few exceptions.
“Thankfully Congress reversed course and protected essential funding for PEPFAR, the U.S. government’s global HIV/AIDS program, which has saved 26 million lives in over 50 countries and received widespread bipartisan support,” said Karen Naimer, JD, PHR director of programs. “PEPFAR has been one of the most successful and transformative global health initiatives – not only must PEPFAR funds be reauthorized in September so essential services can continue, but its success should be replicated to address other pressing global health challenges.”
“While PEPFAR was spared for now, threats to the program still linger,” said Naimer. “And the Trump administration continues to take a wrecking ball to other interrelated global health challenges, from malaria to TB to vaccine-preventable diseases to maternal health. Protecting only one health program is dangerously short-sighted. All U.S. support for global health should be protected the way Congress just showed it could protect PEPFAR.”
A study in The Lancet projects that 14 million people could die by 2030 as a result of the U.S. foreign aid cuts. The same study estimates that USAID work has saved approximately 90 million lives over the past two decades.
“The consequences of these cuts are only just beginning to surface,” said McHale. “The full impact of the funding cuts will continue to unfold over the coming months and years, as people remain cut off from essential services and treatments, become sick from preventable illnesses, and drug-resistant strains of previously treatable infections. Ultimately this will result in a less safe, less stable, less healthy world – for those around the globe and people in the United States.”
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.