Taipei, Taiwan – Until recently, the Mekong subregion in Southeast Asia seems to have been expected to achieve its goal of eliminating malaria by 2030.

Named after a 4,900 km (3,000 miles) river that travels from southwestern China through Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, and has long been plagued by mosquito-transmitting diseases.

According to a global government-funded organization, the number of cases caused by the most common malaria parasites dropped from nearly 500,000 to less than 248,000 from 2010 to 2023, is a global government-funded organization that is the world’s largest funding for prevention, treatment of HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, tuberculosis and Mararia.

Nearly 229,000 of these cases were in a country, a country in Myanmar, when the disease broke out in 2021 and the displaced people.

The administration as President Donald Trump Severely reduce foreign aid With the effective removal of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), health campaigners are now worried that progress made in the Mekong will be lost in the case of officials targeting Myanmar’s anti-Malaria initiative to eliminate it.

“We are investing all resources (Myanmar), but by stopping this resource, malaria will spill back into East Asia and the Mekong region,” Alexandra Wharton-Smith, who worked on the U.S. Myanmar program until it was decided by the Trump administration, told Thailand Jazeera.

The Myanmar government estimates cases have risen 300% since the beginning of the civil war, but Wharton Businessmen said independent research shows that the real number is more than twice that.

Wharton-Smith said new cases have also appeared in parts of Thailand that have never seen malaria, as refugees and immigrants in Myanmar crossed the border, and it is likely to rise further after plans to shut down work to deal with the disease.

The rollback of funds from anti-Malaria efforts in the Mekong is just one of many examples of cuts that are alarming humanitarian workers in the global south, where the collapse of the United States Agency for International Development threatens decades such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, AIDS, Ebola and malnutrition.

On Wednesday, top UN humanitarian officials said the Trump administration has Provides “earthquake shock” to global aid sectors.

“Many people die because this aid is drying up,” Tom Fletcher, head of the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in a press conference on Monday.

Once the world’s largest source of international aid USAID to cut 5,200 of its 6,200 plans – According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it accounts for about 83% of the total.

“The 5,200 contracts that are cancelled now cost billions of dollars, which are in a non-service manner (even in some cases damaged),” Rubio said on Monday on Monday, “

The remaining contracts will be Supervised by the U.S. State Department He said.

The announcement restricted six weeks of turmoil for the agency, which began on January 20, when Trump issued a 90-day “pause” on U.S. development aid.

Thousands of U.S.A.I.D. employees, contractors and support staff With projects around the world receiving “stop work orders” and stopping off leave, being taken or taking leave.

As NGOs scramble to fill budget gaps and understand which programs qualify for the release of life-saving partners’ waivers.

Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to comply with lower court rulings last week Order the government Releases from the rebate of pay owed to U.S. International Development partners and contractors before the moratorium.

A federal judge again called on Monday to release “illegal” seizure funds, believing they have been granted by the U.S. Congress for specific purposes.

U.S. development aid has been the main goal of the Department of Administration Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, and a close adviser to Trump.

Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Center for Population and Health Research in Nairobi, Kenya, said that while she agreed that reforms should be made to U.S. Agency for International Development, the Trump administration showed a “complete lack of understanding of how the world works” about the institution’s stomach.

“We have proven that the funding mechanism of the AID is very, very inefficient. There isn’t much attention to long-term sustainability and the impact of things like that, so it’s not a perfect system. The problem is that you don’t subvert an incomplete system overnight,” JD told Al Jazeera.

“It’s not only people who show up and distribute pills for medical resistance, but there’s also a whole structure,” JD.com said.

“It’s totally ignoring the way things work, the way the world works, the way projects work, and it’s really shocking.”

Politicalized aid

While the full impact of the U.S. International Development cuts remain to be seen, humanitarian workers at a leading nonprofit that runs malnutrition in multiple regions, including Africa and the Middle East, say any funding delays could be fatal.

Humanitarian workers, who asked not to be named, said children were treated in the intensive care unit of the emergency feeding station.

The person told Al Jazeera that “the global humanitarian community has thousands of stable centers around the world, supported by U.S. government funding.”

“This is crucial because with the ups and downs of all those waiting for the waiver to demand a recovery plan, cash flow issues…we can’t keep these centers closed for a day, either. Because if the lights in these centers go out, we’ll see the kids die.”

“Up to this point, it has never been a political issue. Raising hungry children is a bipartisan issue, and humanitarian aid is non-political. Now they have politicized it,” the workers added.

It is unclear how major U.S. programs such as the President’s AIDS Relief Emergency Plan (PEPFAR) and the President’s Malaria Initiative in the future.

Established by Republican President George W. Bush, the projects are believed to have saved more than 32 million lives, according to UN HIV/AIDS and archived U.S. Agency for International Development.

They are all funded by Congress, but implemented through government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is also the goal of Doge’s cost-cutting measures.

Pepfar’s principal partner Unaids said last month that he had notified the U.S. government to terminate its relationship immediately. The agency said HIV programs in at least 55 countries Reported fund cuts.

Under the United Nations, grants from the UNICEF Program for Polio, and funding to the UN Population Fund, which oversees reproductive and sexual health programs.

USAID explicitly denies exemptions from any program related to family planning or so-called “gender ideology.”

NGOs in Asia, Africa and elsewhere are now working to fill the funding gap and are facing serious services due to the issuance of “stop work orders” in the 90-day USAID “suspension”.

According to sources from two NGOs, Rubio’s recent statement at the United States Agency for International Development has barely resolved the chaos, while food and essential items funded by the United Nations Agency for International Development remain locked in warehouses.

Back in the Mekong River, Walton Smith, a former consultant to the U.S. International Development Myanmar program, said she feared that malaria cases had been misled on the Myanmar border over the past two years, which could turn into floods as the U.S. International Development evacuates.

“We will have more malaria, and there has never been a malaria before,” she said. “A lot of people have lost their immunity, which can mean death.” ”

“What happens when we stop treating thousands of malaria? A few weeks later, the rainy season is coming, and then summer. It will be a disaster.”