AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, you would be forgiven for never having heard of diseases like trachoma or schistosomiasis. That is why they are called neglected tropical diseases. These ancient afflictions affect more than a billion people worldwide and can be profoundly debilitating. Well, a small U.S. foreign aid program has worked for nearly two decades to eliminate these diseases. And in January, the Trump administration shut it down. NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports on the impact.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: Around 2018, Diango Tounkara started having trouble with her eyes.
DIANGO TOUNKARA: (Through interpreter) I was suffering from a night vision problem.
LAMBERT: She lives in Kita, a town in Mali, and she says she didn't know what was wrong.
TOUNKARA: (Through interpreter) It was getting worse and worse by the day.
LAMBERT: As it turned out, Tounkara had trachoma, one of 21 conditions collectively known as neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs for short. The bacterial infection can cause eyelashes to curl inwards, eventually causing blindness. But thanks to a program funded by the United States Agency for International Development, Tounkara got treatment and was cured.
TOUNKARA: (Through interpreter) If this wasn't done on time, I'd be sitting at home just as a blind person.
LAMBERT: In fact, Tounkara had known about trachoma for a long time. For about two decades, her job was to distribute drugs in communities across Mali that can prevent and treat NTDs.
TOUNKARA: (Through interpreter) We'd go door to door over four days.
LAMBERT: Those efforts were financed primarily with U.S. funds but carried out by local health workers. It's a strategy with a proven track record. In fact, just a couple years after Tounkara's treatment, Mali officially eliminated the disease that could have blinded her. The country was using the same strategy against other tropical diseases until the programs were cut.
TOUNKARA: (Through interpreter) We were planning to go to meet the communities when we heard about the freeze. I felt totally deceived.
LAMBERT: Deceived, she says, because after years of support, the cuts came abruptly, with no warning. That left health officials in the country reeling. Mamadou Coulibaly coordinates several elimination programs for the Mali Ministry of Health.
MAMADOU COULIBALY: (Through interpreter) It was like a thunderbolt. This lack of financing has stopped our activities.
LAMBERT: Mali was working to eliminate several tropical diseases, and they were close to snuffing out lymphatic filariasis, an NTD that causes awful swelling of body parts.
COULIBALY: (Through interpreter) These are diseases that make someone completely invalid. They have a very heavy impact on the development of the country. There could be a return of these diseases if we're not careful.
LAMBERT: He says the country has scrambled to use its own money to fill the abrupt financial void, but it just isn't enough. To Angela Weaver, the abrupt end of USAID's program is a tremendous waste. She'd worked on that program for over a decade, almost from its start in 2006.
ANGELA WEAVER: I think it was one of the most effective and cost-efficient programs that USAID has ever had.
LAMBERT: That's largely because billions of dollars' worth of medicines were donated by drug companies. All told, the program has provided treatment for more than 1.7 billion people and helped over a dozen countries eliminate at least one NTD, all with a relatively small annual budget of just over 100 million.
WEAVER: It's a rounding error for the bigger global health budgets, but those are still U.S. taxpayer dollars being invested in these communities. And to sort of see that just kind of wiped away is really devastating.
LAMBERT: Weaver is now vice president for Helen Keller International, a nonprofit that's had some success filling the gaps. But she says they're nowhere near big enough to replace the stability U.S. funds had provided. NPR asked several federal agencies whether any NTD programs are still being funded. We reached out to a USAID spokesperson who responded with a screenshot of an NPR story from July with this headline - Farewell to USAID. And above that, their official comment, quote, "What do you think farewell meant?" Jonathan Lambert, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAKE XERXES FUSSELL SONG, "WASHINGTON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.