The Trump administration is launching an $11 billion global health initiative designed to replace the U.S. Agency for International Development with a model that sends aid directly to foreign governments and health institutions, Axios reports.
The initiative, dubbed the America First Global Health Strategy, would bypass nongovernmental organizations that previously worked through USAID and instead direct funding straight to foreign governments, hospitals, and pharmaceutical suppliers.
The U.S. will commit $11.1 billion under the plan to participating countries, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has so far signed 15 agreements with African countries whose goal is to improve their health systems with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and maternal health.
The State Department's goal is to have 50 countries signed on within a few months.
The system, Rubio said, replaces the "NGO industrial complex" that diverted about 70% of U.S. funding to Washington-area middlemen and bureaucrats, a claim former USAID officials strongly contest.
"They built parallel health care, flying a bunch of American workers out there to treat people," said Jeremy P. Lewin, undersecretary of state for foreign assistance, told Axios.
"Yes, you made progress, but it stalled, and you never built durability or self-reliance in these African governments because they had this parallel system."
Lewin said USAID fostered a "neo-colonial mindset" of "the white man has to do it."
The new plan will do more to help developing nations strengthen their healthcare capacity, Lewin said.
President Donald Trump moved early to overhaul USAID, pushing to shrink the agency's footprint and shift more foreign aid away from long-running development programs and toward what his administration called "America First" priorities.
His team proposed deep budget cuts, tightened oversight of grants and contracts, and sought to reduce reliance on outside partners and multilateral institutions, arguing the system was inefficient and too often benefited bureaucrats and contractors.
Many of those efforts ran into resistance from Congress and the foreign policy establishment, but they set the tone for a broader push to restructure how the U.S. delivers assistance overseas.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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