{"id":22148,"date":"2025-02-13T14:02:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T15:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22148"},"modified":"2025-02-13T15:44:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T15:44:42","slug":"usaid-lifesaving-aid-remains-halted-despite-rubios-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22148","title":{"rendered":"USAID Lifesaving Aid Remains Halted Despite Rubio\u2019s Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month that lifesaving humanitarian work would be exempt from a freeze on foreign aid, global health workers breathed a collective sigh of relief.<\/p>\n

But a new directive has put such exemptions on hold.<\/p>\n

Several senior employees at the U.S.A.I.D. Bureau of Global Health received an email Tuesday telling them to \u201cplease hold off on any more approvals\u201d pending further directions from the acting chief of staff, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.<\/p>\n

Senior officials at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received similar instructions during a meeting this week, according to a person familiar with what transpired.<\/p>\n

For weeks, U.S.A.I.D. officials and the organizations, contractors and consultants who partner with them have struggled to continue the kind of work that Mr. Rubio promised to preserve \u2014 \u201ccore lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and substance assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some waivers have been issued to programs that fall under Mr. Rubio\u2019s definition of \u201clifesaving\u201d aid, but the payments system called Phoenix that U.S.A.I.D. relies on to disburse financial assistance has been inaccessible for weeks. That means even programs that received waivers have struggled to continue, according to multiple employees of U.S.A.I.D. and the partner organizations that rely on the funding they distributed.<\/p>\n

The State Department did not reply to a request for comment for this article.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur empowered by President Trump<\/a> to combat the agency, told reporters in the Oval Office that the administration had \u201cturned on funding for Ebola prevention and for H.I.V. prevention.\u201d But in reality, the Ebola funding and virtually all of the H.I.V. prevention funding remains frozen, according to two U.S.A.I.D. employees and several aid groups.<\/p>\n

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When Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month that lifesaving humanitarian work would be exempt from a freeze on foreign aid, global health workers breathed a collective sigh of relief.But a new directive has put such exemptions on hold.Several senior employees at the U.S.A.I.D. Bureau of Global Health received an email Tuesday telling them to \u201cplease hold off on any more approvals\u201d pending further directions from the acting chief of staff, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.Senior officials at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received similar instructions during a meeting this week, according to a person familiar with what transpired.For weeks, U.S.A.I.D. officials and the organizations, contractors and consultants who partner with them have struggled to continue the kind of work that Mr. Rubio promised to preserve \u2014 \u201ccore lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and substance assistance.\u201dSome waivers have been issued to programs that fall under Mr. Rubio\u2019s definition of \u201clifesaving\u201d aid, but the payments system called Phoenix that U.S.A.I.D. relies on to disburse financial assistance has been inaccessible for weeks. That means even programs that received waivers have struggled to continue, according to multiple employees of U.S.A.I.D. and the partner organizations that rely on the funding they distributed.The State Department did not reply to a request for comment for this article.On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur empowered by President Trump to combat the agency, told reporters in the Oval Office that the administration had \u201cturned on funding for Ebola prevention and for H.I.V. prevention.\u201d But in reality, the Ebola funding and virtually all of the H.I.V. prevention funding remains frozen, according to two U.S.A.I.D. employees and several aid groups.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22150,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22151,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22148\/revisions\/22151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}