The U.S. has rolled out a series of bilateral deals with 14 African countries, requiring them to guarantee the U.S. access to pathogen samples and data in exchange for health funding — much of which the U.S. had withdrawn last year through USAID cuts.
It has also offered to restore funding to global vaccine program GAVI, but only if the organization stops using a common mercury-based preservative that Trump’s top health officials have linked to autism, without evidence.
The latest policy is part of a “much larger project by the Trump administration to advance this radical anti-rights agenda,” Beirne Roose-Snyder, a senior policy fellow at the Council for Global Equality, told reporters this week.
Desirée Cormier Smith, a former U.S. diplomat, said she hoped governments in the EU and elsewhere would “push back” and deliver a bracing message to the Trump administration: “We refuse to leave all of our people behind. You’re not going to export your domestic culture wars and the division that plagues the U.S. to our own countries.”
The new rules, which come into effect Feb. 26, will also increase pressure on European governments over their own levels of global health funding. Major donors such as France, Germany and the Netherlands have trimmed their own contributions, as part of the global crunch in aid spending.
Lisa Goerlitz, head of the Brussels office at global health NGO DSW, said Europe must keep foreign aid spending at levels needed “to allow a credible transition towards domestic resources and new financing mechanisms”. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, meanwhile, said the EU faced a “clear test of its leadership and credibility on equality and human rights.”
Claudia Chiappa contributed reporting.