The U.S. State Department signed its first bilateral health agreement with a country in the Western Hemisphere on Wednesday. The U.S. will provide up to $22.5 million to Panama over the next three years, with Panama cofinancing the agreement by increasing its own health spending by over $11 million during that timeframe.
Following the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, the U.S. is embarking on a dramatic shift in the way it delivers health aid. That includes launching its new “America First” global health strategy, and sending teams from the State Department to countries to negotiate new agreements, which the U.S. has said would start being implemented in April.
This new approach prioritizes providing money directly to governments as opposed to funneling it through nongovernmental organizations — a structure that often happened with USAID and that the Trump administration has heavily criticized for having high overhead costs and creating parallel systems.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
