U.S. foreign aid wasn’t a giveaway

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/03/2025 (241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s put it in words that maybe even U.S. President Donald Trump can understand.

You have to build a wall to keep them out.

But in this case, “them” isn’t the illegal aliens President Trump is so fond of railing about. This “them” is new or mutated diseases, and while there was a wall, the current American administration seems to be intent on tearing it down as we speak.

Trump has signed an executive order to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and American foreign aid has been dramatically reduced with the gutting of USAID by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. USAID funds foreign vaccination programs, health care and provides disaster relief, something that, apparently, Trump and Musk feels are unnecessary.

USAID was involved with foreign projects addressing and containing Ebola outbreaks, monitoring avian influenza, providing polio vaccination, researching HIV/AIDS variants, and the list goes on.

There’s even an unidentified mystery disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo that kills people 48 hours after they first develop symptoms — and almost eight per cent of the people who get it have died.

Who is responding to the potential crisis? The World Health Organization, whose reach will be severely limited if the U.S. goes through with removing itself and its funding from the organization.

And it’s not like the U.S. wasn’t aware of the potential damage from cutting back on those types of foreign aid: USAID’s acting administrator for global health, Nicholas Enrich, pointed out the risks in a memo on March 4 — shortly before he was put on administrative leave.

“Tuberculosis programs worldwide keep drug-resistant TB in check,” Enrich wrote. “If these efforts collapse, the U.S. will see more cases of hard-to-treat TB arriving at its doorstep.”

And not only on the doorstep, but in the living room and the dining room as well. In fact, pretty much anywhere.

Why?

Because you can’t stop diseases from travelling with passengers on an aircraft.

So it isn’t just about easing the toll taken by disease in far-off lands.

That sort of foreign aid is two-pronged — on the one hand, it’s soft diplomacy; USAID’s logo projects is “From the American people” and that line appears on every box of medical equipment or food aid or equipment the agency supplies.

On the other, it’s literally self-serving — it was an effort to protect Americans from things like foreign epidemics, as much as it was an effort to protect non-Americans.

The latest moves are a real shame: the U.S. has been a leader in the world in financing proactive, preventive medicine. And the United States has benefited from that investment, along with everyone else in the world — because diseases don’t respect borders.

But no more. Caring for your neighbour used to be a virtue — not, apparently, now.

Now, it’s a cost centre that needs to be cut back, regardless of the potentially deadly fallout, both abroad and at home. And, once again, Enrich spelled out that danger: “Such an action could lead to a sharp increase in preventable diseases, substantial economic losses, and heightened security risks. The effects would be felt both in the United States and worldwide, as rising disease burdens strain healthcare systems, disrupt economies, and contribute to global instability.”

Like going through the on-again-off-again current round of threatened Trump tariffs, it makes us long for a different America — one where even the founding fathers knew the value of nipping dangers in the bud.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” — Benjamin Franklin is often credited with having said that.

Right at the beginning of America.