How US foreign aid cuts are setting the stage for disease outbreaks

Move hobbles work on curbing epidemics, risking spread of deadly pathogens worldwide

- Apoorva Mandavilli

NEW YORK - Dangerous pathogens left unsecured at laboratories across Africa. Halted inspections for mpox, Ebola and other infections at airports and other checkpoints. Millions of unscreened animals shipped across borders.

The Trump administration's pause on foreign aid has hobbled programmes that prevent and snuff out outbreaks around the world, scientists say, leaving people everywhere more vulnerable to dangerous pathogens.

That includes Americans.

Outbreaks that begin overseas can travel quickly: The coronavirus may have first appeared in China, for example, but it soon appeared everywhere, including the US. When polio or dengue appears in the US, cases are usually linked to international travel.

"It is actually in the interest of American people to keep diseases down," said Dr Githinji Gitahi, who heads Amref Health Africa, a large non-profit organisation that relies on the US for about 25 per cent of its funding.

"Diseases make their way to the US, even when we have our best people on it, and now we are not putting our best people on it," he added.

In interviews, more than 30 current and former officials of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), members of health organisations and experts in infectious diseases described a world made more perilous than it was just a few weeks ago.

Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the federal government.

The timing is dire: Congo is experiencing the deadliest mpox outbreak in history, with cases exploding in a dozen other African countries.

The US is home to a worsening bird flu crisis. Multiple haemorrhagic fever viruses are smouldering: Ebola in Uganda, Marburg in Tanzania, and Lassa in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.