Tuberculosis criticism where Trump’s financing is disrupted by the world level

Dalvin Modore walked as if there was a broken glass under his feet, beyond skipping, and his weak shoulder is shattered against the expectation of pain. His pants became so loose that he had to carry her wandering around his small farm in West Kenya.

Mr. Modour has tuberculosis. He is 40 years old, a tall man whose weight has decreased to 110 pounds. He has a cough that flourishes and sometimes vomits the blood. It is afraid that the disease will kill him and he was desperate to be in a medicine to treat it.

Mr. Modour is one of the thousands of Kenyans, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world, with tuberculosis who lost access to treatments and tests in the weeks that have passed on the Trump administration external aid and withdrew funding for health programs around the world.

Many, like Mr. Modour, grew more sick. While they go to their lives, wait and hope, they spread the disease, and others in their families, societies and beyond.

The complete system for finding, diagnosing and treating tuberculosis – which kills more people around the world more than any other infectious disease – Dozens of countries have collapsed throughout Africa and Asia since President Trump ordered the freezing of aid on January 20, the opening day.

US About half of the international donor financing contributed Last year and here in Kenya, she paid the price of everything from nurses to laboratory equipment. Trump administration officials have said that other countries should contribute to a greater stake in global health programs. They say that the administration is evaluating foreign aid contracts to determine whether it is in the interest of the United States.

While some tuberculosis programs may live in the end, none of them received any money for several months.

Family members are not placed from those with preventive treatment. Infected adults share rooms in crowded Nairobi housing, and the injured children sleep four on a bed with their brothers. Parents who took their sick children to test the day before the opening of Mr. Trump are still waiting to hear whether their children suffer from tuberculosis. People with a semi -resistant drug -resistant tuberculosis are not treated.

Mr. Modour shares a bed with his cousin and his home with four other relatives. All of them have seen it becomes more ill and insomnia, as well as fear of their health.

Although it is fully treatment, tuberculosis killed 1.25 million people in 2023, which is last year in which data is available.

The main tuberculosis effort has been completed, the new diagnoses and treatments are tested. The Global Procurement Agency for Tuberculosis was lost, then she was told that it might restore it, but it is still so. Stop TB, a global consortium for government groups and the patient who coordinates tuberculosis tracking and its treatment has been terminated, but he did not receive any money.

The United States did not pay all tuberculosis care in Kenya, but it funded the critical pieces. And when these were frozen, it was sufficient to stop the entire system.

The United States pushed for motorcyclists, who received about one dollar to transfer a sample taken from a person who suffers from a virtual infection to a tested laboratory. The drivers were launched on the first day of the financing pieces – thus stopping the transfer of samples.

For some laboratory equipment used to process tests. In many places, the treatment stopped.

The United States pushed the internet connection that allowed many test sites to send results to remote patients through local community advocates known as tuberculosis heroes. So even when patients find a way to send samples to a work laboratory, the results are stopped.

Without a test, it confirms whether the person is infected and the type of tuberculosis they have, family members cannot start preventive treatment.

For the tests, the United States has paid the half -scale tests that patients need before starting treatment for multi -drug tuberculosis, to ensure that their bodies will be able to withstand harsh medications. These tests can cost $ 80 or more, out of the reach of many patients. Without tests, doctors do not know drugs that prescribe very sick patients. The recipes stopped.

The United States paid the price of ships and trucks that transported drugs to the ports and to warehouses and clinics. The shipments stopped.

The United States has paid for a data management contract that provided a national information panel for data on cases, treatment and deaths. Track stop.

Evaline Kibuchi, the National Coordinator for Tuberculosis Partnership in Kenya, expected that it would take only three months before increasing the injuries and deaths caused by tuberculosis. She said: “But we will not even know about the new deaths, because all the American Trade Association was supported by the United States Agency for International Development.”

The United States also paid salaries – about $ 35 a month – from community health workers and tuberculosis heroes, who lost small salaries indicating their vital role. Research has shown that since tuberculosis treatment involves taking medications for several months, they often have miserable side effects, patients are likely to end a path of medications and are treated when someone verifies them regularly, chanting them and watching lapses.

But throughout Kenya, the community’s defenders continued to work, unpaid, covering the costs of trying to access patients and providing diagnoses from their pockets.

The continuous cough of Mr. Modour drew the neighborhood’s attention in January. Doreen Kikoyo, the hero of the tuberculosis in his area, collected a sample of sputum and used the motorcycle system to send him to the diagnosis.

By the time its results were returned, the Trump administration freezed the system. Mrs. Kikoyo could not get a motorcycle money to transfer to his home to inform him. She said, “But I couldn’t leave him without knowing the answer.” “So walking started.”

She also explained that the laboratory analysis did not provide information about whether it has a drug -resistant form, so he will need more tests before he can start the appropriate drug. But he will have to pay 1000 Kenyle – about $ 8 – to send a sample to the regional laboratory that can take this test. To pay for it, they may need to sell chicken, one of their few assets. Discuss what to do as the days they were put in.

“I really hope to start the medicine, but I left wondering what will happen,” said Mr. Modour, on the afternoon of the last days, as he sits under the position of the trees outside his home.

Ultimately, Mrs. Kikoyo, the bold, managed to detect funds, by collecting contributions from workers in the field of community health and other neighbors who are launching from now. The sample was sent to the laboratory. Good news returned: Mr. Modour had no drug -resistant and could take standard medications.

But no one described them. The employees were paid in the clinic by the United States, and they were now shot. Mrs. Kikoyo was at the end of her intelligence, knowing that Mr. Modour was very sick.

She worked on her phone, using the broadcast time she bought by herself, and sparked a responsible garage in the local government, a doctor to meet her in the hospital and prescribe medicines from the closed clinic store. She collected more money to bring Mr. Modour to the clinic on a motorcycle. While she was watching him smiling and eating his first pills, I felt a flood of comfort.

But immediately, she faced new concern: his family and close neighbors need about ten people to start preventive treatment to protect them from patients as well. The clinic is closed. If you can find a doctor to prescribe medications for adults, at least, they can be delivered. (Tuberculosis drugs for children are complex and require a doctor’s supervision.) But they are out of money to return home. She wore herself on walking to the homes of other patients waiting for tests, waiting for the results, waiting for drugs.

“It is a problem,” she said with boredom. “But we have to reach that family.”

For tuberculosis, patients must take their medications every day, without interruption, for several months.

Barack Odima, a 38 -year -old mechanic in Nairobi, has the deadliest forms of disease, which is resistant to most treatments. Last fall, he began a rare mixture of drugs, but when he went to pick up his medicine two weeks ago, the clinic staff told him that no medicine had been stored and that they had nothing for him.

“If I don’t get this missing medicine, how will I be treated?” Mr. Audima said.

After another week, the clinic received a small group of medications. The doctor and the pharmacist were demobilized, so the hero of the tuberculosis gave him the medicine – but he could not tell him the number of pills he might receive.

While he is in drugs, Mr. Odima is supposed to have a monthly test for his blood, liver and kidneys to ensure that his body is tolerated with them. This costs about $ 80, previously covered in the United States grant, and has not been tested since the freezing of financing. The wife of Mr. Audima and five children is supposed to be re -examined for this month; It will take all his savings to pay the price of X -rays.

In an interview in the poster and stickers clinic clinic and stickers that announce the support of the United States Agency for International Development, Mr. Audima said he was grateful to the United States to help treat him, but he was puzzled because the country cut off help. He said, of course, his government should provide this care. He said: “But we are a dependent country, and that Kenya is unable to support programs so that all people who suffer from these diseases can treat them.”

In fact, the tuberculosis system in Kenya was not very solid before the United States raised its support – the country had nearly 90,000 new infections last year. Laborators were not less than supplies to conduct molecular tests, and people are often diagnosed.

The tuberculosis heroes, who were falling to verify anyone who heard about it with a constant cough, were intended as a low -budget strategy, highly influential to change this. Since freezing aid, they took great importance. In the western Kenyan city of Busia, a hero named Ashnis Ockuz is used the money you earn from snacks to finance flights to remote villages. Since late January, she has been providing diagnoses and collecting phlegm samples in the tractor, the plastic sample that she buys itself, and puts them in a small lunch for a laboratory in the city.

She said, “I am a tuberculosis: I can only let people die.” “Whatever the small money we can find, we use it.”

Aid discounts also paralyzed a network of clinics that it created throughout Africa two decades ago by President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS. These clinics exceeded the weak and bureaucratic health systems and the illegal gain in countries that fight tuberculosis and H.IV. And put patients on life -saving medications quickly. Twenty years later, they are still partial or completely separate, in most places, and they had employees paid in the United States.

African health officials are now scrambling to absorb these patients in the ordinary medical system – up to 40 percent of the people who are interested in it, in the facilities that have already been returned. Kenya’s national government said it is working on a plan but has not provided any details on how to bridge the gap in financing.

But since all cases of tuberculosis and HIV have gone to separate clinics for years, doctors in the main facilities do not know the drug protocols, side effects or signs of treatment failure.

“You will have health care workers who have never seen the issue of tuberculosis. Dr. Timothy Malik, who oversees the tuberculosis program in Kissomo, has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis in Kenya.

Abeel Wanga, who lives in a village in Busia Province, has five children; Two tuberculosis treatment for a year. But the two children, Flemon, 8 years old, hoped to be a pilot one day, and his microscopic sister, 3 years old, still suffers from chest pain, cough, and no appetite.

Mrs. Okose is afraid to resist drugs. Samples of phlegm were collected from them and their three siblings the day before the inauguration. The test is frozen, and all five children continue to sleep under one blanket at night.