Nicholas Kristoff, a journalist with the New York Times, recently visited the “grass roots” of those most directly affected by Elon Musk’s cuts to USAID. Musk recently claimed that no one had died from those cuts. Mr. Kirstoff’s eye-witness account shows something different.
Peter Donde was a 10-year-old infected with H.I.V. from his mother during childbirth. But American aid kept Peter strong even as his parents died from AIDS. A program started by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR saved 26 million lives from AIDS, and one was Peter’s. …
Without the help of the community health worker, Peter was unable to get his medicines, so he became sick and died in late February, according to Moses Okeny Labani, a health outreach worker who helped manage care for Peter and 144 other vulnerable children.
…
“If U.S.A.I.D. would be here, Peter Donde would not have died,” Labani said.
It’s not just the life-saving HIV meds; its vaccines and other forms of preventative healthcare, its food and clean water, its safe places to give birth, and its ultimately… our humanity. Mr. Kristoff assumes that some of his readers might wonder “but why do we need to be the ones to fund all of this?”
He gives two answers; the first flirts with our self-interest–what happens to us if we don’t help them? And he paints a future that is doomed.
The second answer is quoted below:
The second answer to that query reflects not a calculation of self-interest but the moral code we live by. In this century, we are all blessed with miraculous, almost biblical powers: We can heal the sick and save children’s lives, all inexpensively: America spends just 0.24 percent of gross national income on humanitarian aid. We properly honor a firefighter who saves a single child, but three cheers for us as taxpayers for rescuing millions of children around the world from AIDS, starvation and disease.
That is, until January.
Ultimately, Mr. Kristoff makes a concession:
Trump and Musk are right that U.S.A.I.D. needed reforms. It was endlessly bureaucratic, and much of the money went not to the needy but to American companies that knew how to work the system. Yet what Trump and Musk undertook was not reform but demolition.
…
Yet I think most Americans would both welcome some reforms and also be proud to see how we save the lives of hungry children and sick orphans around the world by allocating just 24 cents of every $100 of national income to aid. And I find it odious when the world’s richest man cackles about America shoving programs for needy children “into the wood chipper.”
When you meet those dying children and look into their eyes and hold their hands and feel faint heartbeats flutter, you can’t bear the gleeful laughter. You see children just like your own and hang your head in shame.
We encourage you to read this article for yourself. Analyze the graphics. Look into the eyes of those pictured. Take a peek into the comment section. Let it move you.
Gifted article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/15/opinion/foreign-aid-cuts-impact.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4k4.ijt_.J8wxlcTF-atE&smid=url-share
