Letter to the Editor: Submitted by Peter Kerndt
To the Editor:
I grew up in Lansing and will always consider myself an Iowan. I went to medical school at the University of Iowa and have worked in public health for the last 35 years, most recently in the Tuberculosis Program at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Eight days after the inauguration of President Trump I was terminated along with thousands of other employees by Elon Musk in what was described as an effort to root out waste, fraud and abuse. That is simply not the truth.
After years of misinformation and distortions of the true role and benefit of foreign assistance and its importance to our standing in the world and to our national security, USAID was the first agency to be completely (and illegally) dismantled. By July 1, only a few hundred of 10,000 staff worldwide remain as it has been shrunk and absorbed into the Department of State, making it impossible to deliver its prior lifesaving work in those areas of greatest need.
As a result of having so abruptly and cruelly cut funding and staff, the poorest and most vulnerable people are dying and thousands more will die. The first to die are those that have been cut off from the emergency food assistance in the refugee camps and famine afflicted areas where USAID worked.
Food that was grown in Iowa and throughout the Midwest has been left spoiling in warehouses around the world. Stopping these programs is literally taking food from those who are starving, and those that are dying the fastest are the children.
The slower deaths are among those who won’t receive their medicine for tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and other preventable infectious diseases. It is estimated that continued defunding of USAID will result in more than 14 million excess deaths - including 4.5 million preschool children - from preventable infectious diseases in the next five years. [Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext]
In 2003, President George Bush started PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) that focused on eliminating HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Over 26 million lives have been saved, over one million babies have been born free of HIV and currently 20 million people are on treatment for HIV costing less than a dollar a day.
Every year tuberculosis kills 1.25 million people, over 4,000 people every day, a disease that we know how to treat, cure and prevent. USAID had a strategy to end tuberculosis and to have an AIDS free generation by 2030 but sadly none of this will now be able to be achieved.
I know Iowans are good and would never go along knowing the truth about the suffering and deaths that are occurring because of such an abrupt change in support for foreign assistance.
America is great because America is good, destroying the programs that feed and provide lifesaving medical treatments to the poorest in the world is not good. It is not good for America and will not make us stronger, safer or more prosperous or respected in the world.
It is time to change course, restore this lifesaving work and our soft power and place in the world.
Peter Kerndt, MD, MPH
Santa Monica, CA
Washington, DC
Lansing
