By Jennifer Rigby and Lisa Baertlein
LONDON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hundreds of millions of dollars of life-saving medical supplies are stranded in warehouses and on ships around the world due to President Donald Trump’s move to freeze foreign aid, half a dozen sources familiar with the humanitarian program told Reuters.
That order and other Trump administration efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development have broken a complex global supply chain for U.S.-funded medical aid, regardless of subsequent waivers intended to restart some work, the sources said. That has left goods – including medical oxygen and tuberculosis and HIV drugs – stuck, at risk of damage, expiry or even theft, while patients and doctors are unable to access critical tools to fight disease.
“It has become very difficult,” said Jerry Amoah-Larbi, coordinator of West Africa’s Ghana National TB Voice Network, which works to improve access to tuberculosis prevention and care. He and his peers said clinics are poised to quickly run out of tests and treatment, particularly in remote rural areas.
“By the end of this month, we are going to have shortages of treatments for TB,” he said.
The pause on foreign aid, issued during Trump’s first day in office on January 20, was due to last 90 days while programs are reviewed for consistency with the new administration’s “America First” agenda. The U.S. Department of State has allowed some “life-saving” work to restart, but many partners and contractors have been unable to do so.
At least $20 million worth of medical oxygen and supplies needed to deliver it, enough to help hundreds of thousands of adults and children with often life-threatening breathing problems, is currently stalled at several points in the supply chain, one USAID contractor told Reuters. That includes on ships, at ports or at hospitals where work on the infrastructure to deliver the oxygen has halted.
In a lawsuit filed this week by USAID contractors, one plaintiff – the U.S. sustainable development firm Chemonics – said it had $240 million worth of medicines and health supplies in limbo at various points in the supply chain. The lawsuit did not say what products were included in that estimate.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Most temperature-sensitive medicines such as vaccines, HIV drugs and reagents for testing are transported by air to entry ports and then on to warehouses and distributors. Personal protective gear, syringes and bulky mosquito nets to protect against malaria travel by ships, which can be at sea for weeks at a time.
At any given time, “there’s probably two or three thousand containers on the high seas or in a port somewhere,” an official familiar with USAID’s supply programs told Reuters. Those containers held items like malaria and HIV tests and treatments, contraceptives and maternal and newborn health supplies, he said.
A separate action by the Trump administration that put thousands of USAID workers on leave and moved some of the agency’s functions into the State Department has made the resumption of “life-saving” work more complex, leading contractors to ask if the freeze on foreign aid may be more permanent than just 90 days. An internal government memo sent by a USAID mission overseas, seen by Reuters, said that the payment systems also remained down, which was preventing organizations from restarting work.
Even if USAID operations were allowed to fully resume in the coming weeks, “it will take more than six months to stabilize,” said Prashant Yadav, an expert in healthcare supply chains and senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. “Sending any more supplies essentially is futile.”
(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby in London and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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