‘I am thankful to us for foreign aid’

“I thank for usaid,” I am alive, “says dmytro sherembey.

He has been living with HIV in Ukraine for 24 years, and says the agency, which distributes billions of dollars worldwide, has helped prevent the virus from spreading there.

“Every other HIV positive person in Ukraine was identified for this program,” says Mr. Shermbi.

But the future of USAID (United States Agency) is now very uncertain.

After returning to the post of US President Donald Trump, the first action was signing an executive order, preventing almost all foreign aid for 90 days, while a review could be done. He has said that USAID is run by “radical left lunutics” and is getting away with “tremendous fraud” without providing evidence.

Mr. Sarembi, the chief of the 100% life -leading organization in Ukraine, recalls that when Russia began a full -scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, HIV drug storing warehouses were bombed.

It was USAID aid that made it possible to purchase replacement medicine and distribute it across the country.

“The slogan of USAID is that it is aid from American people. But it turns out that this aid can be prevented by a person’s decision,” he says.

The Usaid was founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. It has a budget of about 10,000 employees and approximately $ 40BN (£ 32.25BN), which is one of the total $ 68BN in foreign aid spending of the US government.

It has Aadhaar in more than 60 countries, and works in dozens of others. However, most of the work on the ground is done by other organizations that give it contracts and funds.

The one who completes the activities is huge. Its work involves providing food in countries where people are dying of hunger, to operate the world’s gold-standard famine, which uses data analysis to try to guess it Does where the lack of food is emerging.

Elon Musk – The world’s richest man, who has been tasked with the shrinking of the US federal government by Trump – has called the agency a “criminal organization”, without providing evidence, and said that it is “time to die “.

But in countries like Afghanistan, the end of USAID can cause huge problems. The agency is one of the largest donors in the country’s health sector, which funds projects that provide life -saving services to mothers and children.

A doctor responsible for the USAID-funded projects says that his team was asked to stay at home after funding, including more than 60, midwives, nurses and doctors.

“The future appears foggy and the effect on patients is largely,” they say.

“If funding continues to stop, mothers will be forced to give birth at home as the facilities are closed and this will increase the mortality,” a midwife says.

Usaid work is also in branches in areas such as cyber security. An Iranian worker, focusing on anti-sensorship, says that his organization works with USAID funding.

“If an opponent person, a university student, or a female right worker is arrested in Iran, it is an NGO as I work immediately for that work, so the person’s email and social media accounts are closed and It is removed, “the worker says. Who requested oblivion for fear of vengeance.

This means that if Iranian intelligence agents force prisoners to reveal their passwords, they cannot reach the person’s communication, the activists say.

“If an internet company works with governance to ban the Iranians’ internet, we publicly expose and receive them … is approved by the European Union and America,” The worker says.

“All of this work is now going to be closed due to funding freeze.”

In its other activities, the USAID also provided scholarship – receiving money alone with 1,077 undergraduate students in Egypt. Trump’s break at international expenses and his comments on USAID thrown the future of these students on suspicion.

One of the affected students, Mohammad Ashraf said, “I feel like I don’t know my fate. I was once a top student with a bright future, but now my future looks dark, and I go in the wrong direction is afraid of.”

Trump is a long -term critic of foreign expenses, and said that it does not represent the value for money for American taxpayers – while singing USAID, which they have described as useless. But what he can actually shut down the agency is not yet clear.

Closing the USAID completely, as a musk wants, will probably require an act of the Congress – in which Trump’s Republican Party holds thin prominences in both chambers.

The administration allegedly intends to merge the US government’s main foreign aid agency with the state department. State Secretary Marco Rubio says that he is now the acting head of the agency – who says that thousands of employees from all over the world will be kept on leave at the end of the week.

For Mr. Sherimbi in Ukraine, bets may not be too much.

“My life is now at risk. If my hospital comes out of this medicine, I have to search it elsewhere,” they say.

“But the tragedy for an HIV positive person in Ukraine is that you can’t just go to a pharmacy and buy these drugs. You can not buy them in the black market. HIV positive people have no option here Is, “They say.

“It is barbaric that we have returned to the Stone Age.”

Reporting by Diana Kursco, BBC Ukrainian; Hafizullah Marof, BBC Afghan; Maryam Zohdi, BBC Persian; Rehabilitation Ismail, BBC Arabic; George Wright