Emergency Food, TB Tests and H.I.V. Drugs: Vital Health Aid Remains Frozen Despite Court Ruling

Funds for vital health programs around the world remain frozen and their work has not been able to resume, despite a federal judge’s order that temporarily halted the Trump administration’s dismantling of the government’s main foreign aid agency.Interviews with people working on health initiatives in Africa and Asia found that parents in Kenya whose children are believed to have tuberculosis cannot get them tested.There is no clean drinking water in camps in Nigeria or Bangladesh for people who fled civil conflict.

A therapeutic food program cannot treat acutely malnourished children in South Sudan.“We have people traveling 300 kilometers from the mountains to try to find their medications at other hospitals, because there are none left where they live,” said Maleket Hailu, who runs an organization that assists people living with H.I.V.in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and relied on funding from the United States Agency for International Development.

“U.S.A.I.D.was providing the medications and transporting them to rural places.

Now these people are thrown away with no proper information.”A State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday that the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio had issued more than 180 waivers permitting lifesaving activities to resume, and that more were being approved each day.The department did not reply to a request to provide a list of the 180 projects.But even programs with waivers are still frozen, according to people in more than 40 U.S.A.I.D.-funded groups, because the payments system that U.S.A.I.D.

used to disburse funds to the organizations has not operated for weeks.Without access to that money, programs cannot function.Organizations usually receive their grants in small increments, by submitting requisitions for activities they will imminently carry out.

They rely on that quick turnaround to keep operating.Many of the groups affected are nonprofits that have no other source of funds.We are having trouble retri...