USAID kept Kajol alive, but after the cuts he is fighting

When Kajol contracted tuberculosis in January, USAID kept it alive. Now she and her family are in danger again after The Trump administration ordered that the majority of American aid spending end.

TB can be fatal if not. Highly contagious bacterial disease, which generally infects lungs, is not frequent in rich countries, because treatment is relatively cheap. But in Bangladesh, it is a scourge.

That is especially in neighborhoods such as Mohammadpur, a poor neighborhood in the capital of Dhaka, where Kajol lives, 17.

“We are poor,” she says. She is the only support for her, her mother and her little brother. Their work in a garment factory keeps them afloat.

Then, when he got sick in January, he could have been catastrophic.

Instead, the aid came through Dipa Halder. During the last three years, she has been arrested Mohammadpur residents about tuberculosis and obtaining people the treatment they need desperately, at no cost.

The initiative, which causes people to prove and take treatment they need, including adequate nutrition, is directed by a local aid organization, Nari Maitree. It was funded by the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) until February, when it received a letter from the United States government saying that the funds had been completed.

That led Kajol treatment, only partially completed, up to an abrupt end.

The cutting of medications in the middle of the treatment makes the possibilities that the TB becomes drug resistant is much greater. It makes the disease much more difficult to fight and put patients with a higher risk of serious diseases and death.

The government provides free medications, but the diagnosis and collection of medications can have a prohibitive cost for many.

“Now I have to go find the medication myself,” she says. “I’m fighting a lot.”

“The people here are quite vulnerable,” says Dipa, 21. “I can tell you to go to a particular doctor, which would help them save some money.

“O I try to provide some financial assistance from our organization so that they can continue their treatment.”

According to a performance report by the United States government seen by the BBC, USAID support in 2023 was directly in the identification and reports of more than a quarter of millions of new TB cases in Bangladesh. In the same year, there were 296,487 new cases or TB relapse that were cured or completed successfully as a result of Usaid.

The agency was seen as an integral part of the country’s struggle against tuberculosis.

“You ask people on the street, they will say yes, they are the United States, they are the ones who maintain it (tuberculosis) in control,” said a director of a USAID project in Bangladesh, who is not authorized to speak publicly and did not want to be named.

“Bangladesh was the largest USAID program in Asia,” says Asif Saleh, executive director of the BRAC organization without profit. “In terms of its impact, particularly in the health sector, it has been massive.

“Particularly around vaccination, reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality, USAID has played a massive role in this country.”

In 2024, Bangladesh received $ 500 million in foreign assistance. This year, that amount has become $ 71 million. To put that number in context, in the three-year period of 2021-2023, USAID committed an average of $ 83 million annually in Bangladesh only on health initiatives, including the combination of TB.

USAID cuts have meant that Nari Maitree can no longer offer its Stop TB program, but it also means that Dipa is out of work. She supports her older parents and her younger sister.

“I am completely destroyed now that I lost my work. I am carrying the cargo of the family. Being unemployed is a devastating situation,” he told the BBC.

In a document seen by the BBC, 113 programs financed directly by the USAID office in Bangladesh they have stopped. The list does not include innumerable programs that are directly financed by US agencies in Washington.

“The NGO sector (in Bangladesh) uses at least 500,000 people,” says Saleh. “It’s huge. Thousands and thousands of jobs will be eliminated.”

Not only the United States move away from foreign aid. The United Kingdom has announced cuts to its foreign assistance programs, just like Switzerland. Other countries are likely to do the same.

It is an alerting reality for Bangladesh. The country’s government was overthrown last year and the economy is unstable, with inflation about 10% and a job crisis, particularly among young people.

The interim leader Muhammad Yunus says that Bangladesh will find a new strategy on how to survive after help cuts, but does not say how.

When he is pressed in a BBC interview on how the country will cover the USAID deficit, Yunus said: “It was a small part, not much. It does not mean that Bangladesh disappears from the map.”

Asif Saleh says that the way in which the cuts have been implemented has been abrupt and chaotic. The impact on a country like Bangladesh is immeasurable.

Nowhere is it clearer than in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal city in southeast Bangladesh, home in the world’s largest refugee camp. More than one million Rohingya, a community of persecuted Muslim minorities that the United Nations calls victims of ethnic cleaning, fled violent purges in their country of origin, neighbor Myanmar.

Unable to return home and not be able to work outside the refugee field, the Rohingya depend on international aid for their survival.

The United States contributed almost half of all help to Rohingya refugees.

“We have run out of soap,” says Rana Flowers, country representative of the UN Children’s Agency Unicef. “Now we have to walk the water in the camps. It is an absolutely critical moment. There is an outbreak of cholera with more than 580 cases, along with an outbreak of the scabies.”

Water sanitation projects in the camps used to be financed by USAID.

Since the order to stop work entered into force at the end of January, hospitals such as the Red Cross International Hospital in Cox’s Bazar are reduced to providing emergency assistance only. Any hope that the money was reinstated was crushed this week, when the Trump administration canceled more than 80% of all programs in Usaid.

Patients like Hamida Begum, who received regular treatment for hypertension, stay with few options.

“I am old and I have no one to help me,” she says. Her husband died last year, leaving her care for her four children alone, including her 12 -year -old daughter who can’t walk.

“I can’t go to another hospital away from home due to my daughter.”

In a UN Food Distribution Center, Rehagm is stopped with two major catches.

Inside, he says, there are six liters of kitchen oil and 13 kg of rice, along with basic concepts such as onions, garlic and dry chiles. These rations, which were given the World Food Program (PMA), need to last her and her family for a month.

I ask him how he will fix them now that his rations will be cut in half from next month.

It seemed surprised. Then she began to cry.

“How can we survive with such a small amount?” Ask Rehana, 47, who shares a room with her husband and five children. “Even now, it’s hard to handle.”

The PMA says that it was forced to make the drastic cut due to “a critical financing deficit for its emergency response operations.”

The rations that are now assigned to the Rohingya community will only satisfy their basic daily dietary needs, which lights the fears that they will be left enough to live and not much more.

“This is an absolute developing disaster,” says Rana Flowers of Unicef. “The frustrated people desperate inside the camps will lead to security concerns. If that intensifies to the extent that we could, we will not be able to go to the camps to help.”