cuts to USAID <\/a>could result in 14 million otherwise preventable deaths worldwide by 2030. The estimates were based in part on the lifesaving effects of USAID\u2019s past work on food security, HIV treatment, medical care and other services.<\/p>\nThe cuts already deeply hit Yemen, a country that is no stranger to tragedy. A calamitous civil war \u2014 which began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital and spurred a furious assault from a Saudi-led coalition \u2014 made Yemen in years past the site of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian catastrophes.<\/p>\n
Though Yemen has since been surpassed in devastation by other conflict spots, 19.5 million people \u2014 slightly less than half of the population \u2014 needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, with the majority of them food insecure, the U.N. says. <\/p>\n
This year, with political upheaval persisting throughout the country, the expectation is that number will increase to 21 million; it\u2019s a situation made more difficult by the Trump administration\u2019s 2025 designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
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A soldier walks by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
(Osamah Abdulrahman \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
The designation, humanitarians say, in effect outlaws aid deliveries to areas under Houthi control, where 70% of the population resides. At the same time, the Houthis have detained 73 U.N. staff members and confiscated vehicles and telecommunications equipment, leaving the U.N. unable to operate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have the perturbations of the conflict and increased humanitarian needs at the same time as a challenging funding environment constrained the delivery environment,\u201d said Julien Harneis, the U.N.\u2019s resident coordinator in Yemen. \u201cSo all the conditions are coming together for a very difficult year.\u201d<\/p>\n
For aid organizations in Yemen that relied on U.S. largesse, the aim has shifted to preserving whatever remains of their operations. <\/p>\n
An aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing remaining assistance flows said the organization he worked for had shut down one of its two offices, fired 250 out of 300 employees and suspended support to dozens of health centers. The organization\u2019s portfolio had shrunk from roughly $32 million to $2 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, we have other donors from Europe and Canada, but it doesn\u2019t equal even 5% of what the Americans would give,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some organizations have tried tailoring proposals to fit Washington\u2019s regional priorities, including countering Iran and Al Qaeda, or by excluding terms that under the Trump administration have in effect become verboten.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything focusing on gender, feminism, or LGBT protection: A statement with any of those concepts wouldn\u2019t get sign-off,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
To get a sense of what a difference a year makes, last January, before the aid cuts, Fadhli was about to extend the operations of the Al Kawd clinic from 12-hour shifts to 24. <\/p>\n
Three doctors \u2014 an OB-GYN specialist and two general practitioners \u2014 already made the daily 52-mile journey from Aden, the main city in Yemen\u2019s south, to Al Kawd to treat about 300 patients every day. Medical assistants, chosen from local village women, received $100 a month and training sessions to work in the clinic and help serve the community\u2019s needs. <\/p>\n
The clinic had enough basic medications for three months, and there was funding to procure specialized medicine for patients with complicated illnesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople come here because they have no money, but before we could offer them solutions to their problems,\u201d said Dr. Umayma Jamil, the 37-year-old OB-GYN specialist who is the last remaining physician in the clinic. She comes only once a week, paid for by whatever funds the clinic can cobble together.<\/p>\n
Now, Jamil said, she will give a diagnosis, prescribe medicine and then see the patient return with the same complaint.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ask them, \u2019Did you get medicine?\u2019 And they say they can\u2019t because there\u2019s no money,\u201d Jamil said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s natural to be frustrated, but I don\u2019t know what to do. It\u2019s not in my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The effects of such a drastic scaling down of aid aren\u2019t restricted to smaller facilities; they extend even to major medical institutions such as Al-Razi, the main hospital in Abyan province, serving more than 30,000 people every year.<\/p>\n
Children are dying, and more children will die later this year<\/p>\n
\u2014 Julien Harneis, U.N. resident coordinator in Yemen<\/p>\n
Dr. Muhsen Abdullah, the surgeon who heads the emergency room, spoke with a weary tone of a ward without surgical thread or stitches, and anesthesiologists forced to ask patients to purchase their own anesthetic. <\/p>\n
\u201cSurgical perishables, antibiotics, even iodine and rubbing alcohol \u2014 all this the patient has to buy from the outside before they come in for surgery. It\u2019s ridiculous,\u201d he said, adding that some patients postponed procedures because they couldn\u2019t afford postoperative treatment.<\/p>\n
Around him were additional signs of disrepair: an X-ray examination board without a functioning backlight, and a dust-covered ultraviolet sterilization machine that hadn\u2019t worked in months.<\/p>\n
With humanitarian groups operating under extremely tight budgets, there\u2019s little they can do when epidemics hit \u2014 assuming they can detect them in the first place, because much of that information relied on health centers reporting outbreaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we have no reports. Zero,\u201d the aid worker said. For example, he said, cholera cases in Yemen would appear to be fewer than last year, although suspected numbers are far larger.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can they tell you anyway? There are no kits to test.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Al Kawd, Fadhli and Jamil have already detected a few cases of cholera in the village. It\u2019s a terrifying prospect, they said, because the disease transmitted by infected water killed a few dozen people \u2014 most of them children \u2014 last year. But with no money for quarantine or medications, there isn\u2019t much they can do, so they expect the outbreak to get worse.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in line with predictions from Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator, who said aid groups in Yemen were anticipating an increase in epidemics \u201cwhich we won\u2019t be able to control, and an increase in mortality and morbidity, particularly affecting young children.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren are dying, and more children will die later this year,\u201d he said. And once such outbreaks hit, there\u2019s no guarantee they\u2019ll stay within the confines of Yemen, he added. \u201cEpidemics don\u2019t stop at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n
This month, the U.S. completed its withdrawal <\/a>from the World Health Organization, a decision, the group said, that made \u201cboth the United States and the world less safe.\u201d<\/p>\nMany in the aid community acknowledge USAID wasn\u2019t perfect and understand complaints that it could be used to promote ideas the Trump administration denounces as \u201cwoke.\u201d <\/p>\n
But they nevertheless lament the rollback of their work. One person likened it to America\u2019s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving the field open for the Taliban to destroy all of USAID\u2019s projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK, you could say USAID was unsustainable, but there\u2019s an argument to be made you shouldn\u2019t close the tap completely,\u201d said the aid worker, adding his employer has been operating in Yemen since 1994.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this move, you\u2019ve destroyed the work of decades.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AL KAWD, Yemen \u00a0\u2014\u00a0In the cramped examination room of this tiny village clinic, Rania Moussa lay on her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[192396,192395,192391,49,48,32503,4404,192394,84,392,7480,9594,192397,7456,192392,192393,78215,2552,31749],"class_list":{"0":"post-473269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-aid-organization","9":"tag-al-kawd","10":"tag-assistance-last-year","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-clinic","14":"tag-country","15":"tag-foreign-assistance","16":"tag-health","17":"tag-healthcare","18":"tag-month","19":"tag-patient","20":"tag-rania-moussa","21":"tag-trump-administration","22":"tag-u-n-program","23":"tag-u-s-cut","24":"tag-usaid","25":"tag-year","26":"tag-yemen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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