Cuts to US foreign aid funding

Available for over a year

On his first day in office, Donald Trump froze foreign aid funding, ordering an immediate review into USAID, the government agency which was running programmes in around 120 countries. The review was swift and the cuts severe. President Trump’s team concluded that tens of billions of dollars were being spent in ways which “did not serve” or “harmed" US interests. In our conversations, we hear from USAID employees who describe the shock of suddenly losing their own jobs, and the grim anticipation of the impact the cuts will have on people around the world. “It breaks my heart for our work to be dismantled in just a couple of days and months” says Daisy. We also hear from people running treatment centres around the world, and about the impact on HIV provision in Africa. Mike and Nelson, two men living with HIV, explain their situation and their fears for the future, and clinician Dr Natasha Davies describes the powerlessness she feels, and the human devastation she says is to come. “There are some news stories, like Hiroshima and the Holocaust and the 911 towers, that we all remember for our whole lives because there are such powerful visuals, but it's hard to give a visual for this, even though it's impacting millions of lives” Presenter: Mark Lowen BBC producers: Laura Cress, Angela Sheeran and Virginia Kelly Boffin Media producer: Anne McNaught (Photo: Two girls in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: Ro Yassin Abdumonab/Reuters)