By Kalinga Seneviratne

Since President Donald Trump made the shock announcement last week of  freezing United States’ (US) foreign aid budget for three months while threatening to close down its main delivery agency, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the multi-million dollar aid industry has been in shock, while the western media, particularly the American media, has been saturated with reports of how the poor of the world will suffer, if the US aid budget is frozen.

In reporting the aid freeze, New York Times (NYT) in an article under the heading “Health programs shutter around the world” said that health workers across Africa, South America and Southeast Asia were in tears talking to NYT about how years of building health care assistance to the vulnerable over the years are now facing closedowns.

The report cited national malaria control programs in Uganda; provision of dehydration salts to treat life-threatening diarrhoea in toddlers and drugs to stop brain haemorrhages in pregnant women in Zambia; clinical trials of the use of medical devices by patients in Africa and South America: and frontline care for treatment of chronicle disease such as HIV-AIDS, as among the programs that will be threatened by this aid freeze.

“They presented a compassionate, generous image of the United States in countries where China has increasingly competed for influence,” noted NYT.

Washington Post noted that the US “is by far” the world’s largest source of foreign assistance providing “4 out of every 10 dollars donated for humanitarian aid”. While pointing out that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio has provided a waiver on some forms of humanitarian aid, it said, the “move would rescue more of the programs that keep alive........

© Eurasia Review