New US global strategy makes millions suffer

The Trump administration, which began by announcing its decision to leave the World Health Organisation (WHO) and followed up by driving a wrecking ball through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), pulling out of UN bodies and slashing funding for vaccination and health research, has gone from bad to worse since taking office in January.

The vast majority of USAID programs have been scrapped, pulling the lifeline from millions of impoverished people around the world. So it was a surprise when, in September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio published a new Global Health Strategy.

The strategy makes very strange reading in the light of the brutal cutbacks that have already taken place.  It begins, with no sense of irony, by claiming:

“The United States has been and remains the world’s health leader.”

It makes no mention of the WHO; no mention of the UN or its various bodies, through which the US has also worked under every other President since it was set up after the end of World War 2, but from which it is now withdrawing, and no mention of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, for which US funding has been drastically cut back.

Such relationships as the US is now seeking are strictly bilateral, with the US State Department calculating which countries could yield the best return on the much-reduced ‘investment’ in international aid.

There are fleeting references to USAID, all of which relate to its previous work, but no mention of its virtual abolition, the reduction from 10,000-plus staff to a bare legal minimum rump of 15, or the wholesale axing of 86% of USAID and other international programs.

Strangely, given the $2 billion (42%) cutback in its funding, it is remarkable that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR, launched by George W. Bush in 2003 to combat the global HIV/AIDS epidemic) is mentioned up front and repeatedly in the Strategy.  This might give some the impression that Trump’s administration was genuinely proud of it and committed to its work, rather than having only been dissuaded from deeper cuts by the direct intervention of the George W. Bush Foundation and the former President.

The Strategy is (perhaps not surprisingly) lacking in any specific commitments or any long-term vision. America’s once leading role of health research and foreign aid has already been abdicated – ironically leaving the field clear for the Chinese to step in as the largest contributor to the WHO, leading lender and donor

Far from ‘Making America Great Again’, Trump’s onslaught has effectively terminated any major US role in global health care, at least for the next four years.

Out now: Wealth versus Health – Trump’s Global War on Health and Science, a new book by John Lister just published as a paperback by Bite-Sized Books: available at https://tinyurl.com/vzdys8py

Dear Reader,

If you like our content please support our campaigning journalism to protect health care for all. 

Our goal is to inform people, hold our politicians to account and help to build change through evidence based ideas.

Everyone should have access to comprehensive healthcare, but our NHS needs support. You can help us to continue to counter bad policy, battle neglect of the NHS and correct dangerous mis-infomation.

Supporters of the NHS are crucial in sustaining our health service and with your help we will be able to engage more people in securing its future.

Please donate to help support our campaigning NHS research and  journalism.                              

DONATE