We recently heard that USAID has been shut down and CDC aid programs have been frozen. For many who voted for this disruption, they may not feel the impacts of these measures, but the impacts will come, and they will be felt around the world before they are felt here.

The United States Agency for International Development, while not understood by many and less than half a percent of our federal budget, is the shining light of our foreign diplomacy. Initiated by President Kennedy, it provides lifesaving nutrition, health capacity, poverty reduction and democracy strengthening to the poorest nations around the world.

We had the privilege of working for two South African organizations at the start of PEPFAR, President Bush’s most notable accomplishment. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief originally started in 13 countries impacted by HIV/AIDS. South Africa was the epicenter of this pandemic. As a result of this program in South Africa, more than five million individuals were placed on treatment, mother-to-baby transmission of HIV dropped from 30% to 1%, the rate of transmission in the adult population was reduced by 60% as a result of a nation-wide medical male circumcision program that circumcises over 1 million boys per year. USAID also made significant progress in the screening and treatment for prevention of cervical cancer, the number one cause of cancer deaths for women in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are certain that false news will be coming out that USAID spent millions on some fabricated nonsensical “woke” initiatives. Don’t listen to it. The truth is that the work of USAID has been appreciated with bi-partisan support since 1961 and the priorities of the USAID mission have grown out of values our country claims to support. There are now allegations that these aid programs have been misspent or wasted. Our experience with USAID and CDC audits is that their level of scrutiny is significant. The evaluation and measurement of the effectiveness of these programs is continuous. As a U.S. citizen, you should be proud of the impact these programs have had on millions of people around the world and the oversight that these federal agencies have provided.

This work of USAID ran in close collaboration with the CDC to not only address a health pandemic but implemented agreements with drug companies to significantly lower drug costs for HIV and TB in developing countries to make treatment affordable and accessible. Through this work, bilateral agreements were made with all of these countries that enabled improved national health systems, stabilized economies, and provided strong government-to-government relationships for a global security strategy. Living in Southern Africa for 17 years, we experienced the U.S. strategy of partnership, assistance and investment, but we also experienced and witnessed the approach of China that bought out leaders for mineral rights and brought in only Chinese workers to benefit from the resource extraction.

The elimination of USAID and CDC-funded initiatives will not only significantly impact the health, food security and stability of families and communities throughout the developing countries, it will create a vacuum that will be filled by China whose approach may not be in the best interest of the countries themselves. This global partner shift will negatively impact resource-limited countries with their evolving leadership, their economic stability and will exacerbate immigration. The CDC also helps in preventing the spread of diseases throughout the world which can impact the U.S., such as tuberculous, mpox, and the hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola. USAID and CDC in the past have been critical in responding to infectious disease outbreaks throughout the world as they did with Ebola in West Africa in 2015. USAID responds to 75 crises a year. At present there is an Ebola outbreak in Uganda and Marburg in Tanzania. Now that we have also withdrawn from the World Health Organization, we are no longer partners in addressing these global challenges.

The irony is not lost on us that the richest man in the world took as his first step, eliminating the most impactful programs in our federal government that serve the poorest people in the world. It is clear that America first could be morally last.

Kurt Firnhaber, who is writing in his personal capacity, and Cindy Firnhaber MD live in Boulder.