Emergency feed, TB tests and HIV medication: Vital health aid remains frozen despite a judicial decision

The funds for important health programs all over the world are still frozen and their work could not be resumed despite the arrangement of a federal judge, which temporarily stopped reducing the government’s main aid agency.

Interviews with people who work on health initiatives in Africa and Asia found that parents in Kenya whose children have tuberculosis cannot have them tested. In camps in Nigeria or Bangladesh there is no clean drinking water for people who have fled to civil conflicts. A therapeutic food program cannot treat an acute malnourished children in South Sudan.

“We have people who travel 300 kilometers from the mountains to find their medication in other hospitals because there is no one left where they live” and based on the financing of the United States Agency for International Development. “USAID made the medication available and transported it to rural places. Now these people are thrown away without adequate information. “

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that Foreign Minister Marco Rubio’s office issued more than 180 exceptional regulations to allow life -saving activities to resume and that more were approved every day. The department did not respond to an inquiry to provide a list of the 180 projects.

But even programs with exemptions are still frozen, according to people in more than 40 groups financed by USAID, because the payment system that USAD has used to fill the organizations for weeks that have not been operated for weeks. Programs cannot work without access to this money.

On Thursday evening, judges Amir H. Ali from the US district court for the District of Columbia refused an application for contempt for the court for further freezing help and recognized that the government had recognized the “quick compliance of the arrangement”.

However, he wrote that the injunction “does not allow the defendant to simply continue their flat-rate suspension of the foreign help acquired in the congress” in order to have time to “find a new post-hoc rationalization for the suspension of the measure”.

Organizations usually receive their grants in small steps by submitting requirements for activities that they will carry out immediately. You rely on this fast turnaround to continue working. Many of the affected groups are non -profit organizations that have no other source of the center.

“Some NGOs have received exceptional regulations, but do without money are just pieces of paper – and they cannot do programs with only paper,” said Tom Hart, the Chief Executive Officer from Interaction, who represents 165 organizations that provide foreign help. “These organizations were not paid for the work from December, and they have no certainty that they will be paid for this work or work in the future.”

The Trump -Lenamen, which is now the director of the Office for Foreign Support in the Foreign Ministry, said at a meeting with aid organizations last week and said that the payment system was offline, but would be restored by February 18. been.

Mr. Marocco signed a statement submitted to the judge before the Federal Supreme Court and reported on compliance with the government’s entry -level order. In it he argued that the administration acted on the basis of other regulations and not on other regulations, not on the order of the executive in order to continue to freeze financing.

The Trump administration insists that the waiver system continues to forward the emergency work without restrictions. However, the process of issuing the exceptions was complex, said the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry because the department had to check that organizations that they are looking for do not correctly present their activities.

“The department found that many activities that were previously referred to as life -saving humanitarian aid,” the explanation said.

USAID has not financed any gender -specific transition operation. Programs that had a gender -specific focus contained efforts to protect women from domestic violence and to prevent HIV infections among young girls in need of protection.

Organizations that have received no symptoms report that one or two activities in larger projects have been approved for restarting, while the surrounding and related activities are still frozen.

The managing director of a large organization that offered healthcare that asked not to be identified because he was spoken to the news media by the USASID-STOP work arrangement, said his agency had received two out of 24 exceptions for which she applied for. If the organization had all the waiver, they would cover about five percent of their activities. So far it has not received any funds. “I can’t buy medication with a waiver,” he said.

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation is the only organization that The Times found in an extensive survey of USAID recipients who have started the work after receiving a waiver.

However, the foundation could not access a new money. In order to restart its HIV test and treatment programs, it has used money as a repayment for payments before the stop work order, said Trish Karlin, Executive Vice President of the organization. She said the foundation received exceptions for 13 of its 17 projects.

“We were not paid for awards in which we are not financed by advances, but in deficeat after we have invoiced the US government and are due almost 5 million US dollars,” she said.

Karoun Demirjian contributed to the reporting.