Abby Bloom worked on women’s and children’s health programs for almost a decade with USAID. She knows all too well how women and children are already suffering and dying as a result of USIAD’s shutdown this week, with more far-reaching consequences to come.
Last week’s wholesale shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration has started having a devastating effect on women worldwide.
‘Cruel’ is the word repeatedly used to describe the shutdown. As the primary U.S. agency for foreign aid, USAID has been instrumental for nearly 50 years in advancing women’s health, economic empowerment, and rights.
While USAID is unknown to most Australians, they will probably recognise the names of many of the hundreds of highly regarded not-for-profit organisations that have been funded by USAID to support women and children throughout the developing world, in crises, and in conflicts like Ukraine. Indeed, some of us may even be donating directly to those same NGOs. Now those organisations, their employees and their activities are shuttered.
As documented by The New York Times, people are being turned away from health clinics and hospitals, denied life-saving medications and even abandoned by the doctors and scientists overseeing the clinical trials in which many women courageously volunteered.
I know from firsthand experience what is happening and the toll it will take.
I worked for USAID on women’s and children’s health for nearly 10 years. I personally managed women’s and children’s health programs and water and sanitation projects in rural Panama for 4 years. While there, I developed USAID’s first Women and Development national strategy. I then spent 6 years working for USAID in the State Department building in charge of USAID’s health, water and sanitation policy globally. I was responsible for reviewing, appraising and approving all USAID projects in these fields – hundreds all over the world.
During more than a decade with USAID, and subsequently as an advisor to The World Bank, AusAid, UNICEF and multiple sovereign governments, I had further opportunities to witness firsthand the tenuous lives of women in poor countries ranging from Senegal to Sudan, Bangladesh to Mongolia, the West Bank and Gaza to rural Peru and Honduras.
This tragedy is rolling out on multiple fronts but women are worst affected.
Most of us in Australia don’t have a day-to-day need or the head space to think through the consequences of drastic foreign policy changes that affect people we’ve never met or seen. That’s understandable – it’s happening far away and we are so sandwiched juggling our households and work we barely have space to worry about international crises.
To help, I’ve broken down the following key impacts for women and children:
Women’s health takes a huge hit
USAID has been a leader among nations in funding and providing reproductive health services globally. Its family planning programs have offered contraception, maternal health care, and HIV treatment to millions.
The abrupt cessation of these services is expected to lead to increased maternal mortality, unintended pregnancies, and the spread of sexually transmitted infections. How?
As a young researcher I spent months sitting in and observing local government health clinics throughout rural and impoverished urban slums in Jamaica. I saw how (and whether) women received the basic health care they and their children needed. I repeatedly saw that when a doctor or nurse failed to arrive for a woman’s monthly reproductive health visit, she and her little ones who had walked long distances and waited all day went away emptyhanded. No monthly supply of contraceptives? A new baby almost guaranteed. I have seen the dynamics when services are suspended, or medical supplies are only available on a user-pays basis. The blanket closure of critical services for women is already having a dire impact around the world. Actions have consequences.
Here are some additional examples of what is happening to women right how:
- The embargo on delivering antimalarial mosquito nets means malaria among pregnant women surges leading to low birthright babies at long-term risk and preventable child death
- Neonatal and childhood vaccinations defunded means resurgence of lethal diseases almost unknown in Australia (e.g. measles, polio, tuberculosis).
- HIV/AIDS medications cut off means new suffering and death among those previously stabilised and the spread of HIV/AIDS accelerates, orphaning growing numbers of children.
- Prenatal care is cancelled leading to widespread complications in childbirth and preventable maternal deaths.
- Food supplies stop causing malnutrition and starvation. Mothers deliver vulnerable underweight infants and are helpless to save their weak and starving children.
- Promising research into life-saving therapies and treatments are abruptly halted. Years of research and experimentation, with USAID supporting development of drugs for neglected (i.e., not profitable enough) tropical diseases, shut down. Effective drugs will never emerge.
Young women are denied education, their futures eclipsed
From one day to the next this week the closure of USAID’s programs means millions of girls have shockingly ended their chance at an education, limiting their future opportunities and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Where there is an alternative, it requires their parents to pay fees they simply cannot afford. And if they can afford to only educate one or two children in a family, it is most likely to be sons not daughters.
USAID has for decades funded the education of girls as well as boys to redress the gender gap in education and support both literacy and economic empowerment for women. In many poorer nations – like Panama in the 1970’s and 80’s – USAID funded and built primary schools, the foundation for girls having a chance at literacy, empowerment, employment and a healthy and dignified life.
Women are economically disempowered
Beyond health, USAID has been active for decades promoting women’s economic security. They have funded NGOs’ programs that give women access to training, services, and leadership opportunities. Thousands of women have now lost the only means available to them to have a chance at developing their talents and advancing to leadership roles.
But there’s more….
The shutdown of USAID funded programs for women will reverberate and cause ripple effects.
That is because USAID often collaborated with other donors to ensure countries’ women’s programs were coherent, synchronised among donors, and did not waste funds on separate administrative functions.
I represented Australia in the preparation of a 9-donor coordinated women’s health megaproject in Bangladesh. The UK, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden and other nations all collaborated to supply essential services to isolated health outposts where, for example, I witnessed the same needle used all day long for childhood vaccinations because the government simply didn’t have the money for the most basic supplies. Without USAID as the anchor donor, many high impact future programs like this will not proceed.
So What Can We Do?
Experts have explained that it will be impossible for other donors or NGOs to fill the void left by USAID’s withdrawal.
The USAID contribution is, or was, just so massive that the full gap is unbridgeable by global organisations and other countries. But each of us can do something: we can double down on our direct tax-deductible contributions to NGOs that support women in developing countries.
Here is a starter list supporting women by no means inclusive: CARE Australia, ActionAid Australia, Plan International Australia, WaterAid, The Global Women’s Project, One Girl Australia, 100 Women, Women for the World (Caritas Australia), Australian Cervical Cancer Foundation (ACCF), Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA, and UNICEF Australia.
Pictured above: A USAID-sponsored program in Mymensing, Bangladesh, pictured on February 21th 2024 on International Mother Language Day.