U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration’s stop-work order on USAID programming threatens to destroy the global health infrastructure America has spent decades building, according to Dr. Atul Gawande.
On his first day in office, Trump placed a 90-day pause on foreign aid spending that was then intensified last Friday, when the Department of State ordered an immediate pause on new spending, as well as a stop-work order for existing grants and contracts.
“The 90 days stop order on USAID does enormous damage to America, and it is a gift to our enemies and competitors,” said Gawande, who ran USAID’s global health programming for the last three years before leaving the organization as Trump took office.