Hundreds of Kenyans have been sent home after the US suspended foreign assistance programs for 90 days.
From universities to counties, the Kenyans who depended on the programs have been told to take an indefinite leave starting February 1.
This means the individuals running into thousands will be jobless for now.
Health stakeholders are now emphasizing the need for domestic health financing to break the dependency on donor funding for critical programs.
Shock and uncertainty has gripped the health sector as the realities of the U.S. funding freeze sink in.
The stop-work order, signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on his first day back in office, temporarily suspended all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they align with his policy goals.
The directive has left many government and non-governmental organizations that ran programs supported by U.S. funding cash-strapped and struggling to stay afloat.
For instance, Kisii County government, for instance, has suspended all U.S.-funded activities and sent over 500 workers home with only their January 2025 salaries.
A letter by the county director of public health and sanitation directed the workers to hand over and wait for further guidance.
Homa Bay County government has also asked staff of the affected programs to hand over to the in-charge within their departments as they implement the order.
In Kisumu County, HIV care and treatment services have been integrated into routine healthcare services in all level 2 and level 3 facilities. The county has resorted to phasing out standalone HIV comprehensive care centres.
USAID has also announced that all workers under the Fahari ya Jamii project will proceed on a compulsory three-month unpaid leave effective February 1, 2025.
The directive affects over 700 personnel operating under the program run through the University of Nairobi in Kajiado and Nairobi counties.
The Sh4.2-billion project, which was in its fourth year, was scheduled to end in May 2026.
Over 72,000 HIV patients who were on ARVs have been adversely affected by the abrupt closure of over 150 clinics, which were run in collaboration with county governments.
The impact goes beyond the health sector, officials say.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has issued waivers on existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs, including core life-saving medicine, which may apply to health programs such as PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which works with partners in 55 countries worldwide.
Meanwhile, in the US, public health data disappeared from websites, entire webpages went blank and employees erased pronouns from email signatures Friday as federal agencies scrambled to comply with a directive tied to Trump’s order rolling back protections for transgender people.
The Office of Personnel Management directed agency heads to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and emails in a memo sent Wednesday, with changes ordered to be instituted by 5 p.m. Friday.
It also directed agencies to disband employee resource groups, terminate grants and contracts related to the issue, and replace the term “gender” with “sex” on government forms.
Some parts of government websites appeared with the message: “The page you’re looking for was not found.” Some pages disappeared and came back intermittently.
Asked by reporters Friday about reports that government websites were being shut down to eliminate mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, Trump said he didn’t know anything about it but that he’d endorse such a move.
“I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me,” Trump said, adding that he campaigned promising to stamp out such initiatives.
Much public health information was taken down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: contraception guidance; a fact sheet about HIV and transgender people; lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and non binary kids; details about National Transgender HIV Testing Day; a set of government surveys showing transgender students suffering higher rates of depression, drug use, bullying and other problems.
Eliminating health resources creates dangerous gaps in scientific information, disease experts said. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, a medical association, issued a statement decrying the removal of information about HIV and people who are transgender. Access is “critical to efforts to end the HIV epidemic,” the organization’s leaders said.
A Bureau of Prisons web page originally titled “Inmate Gender” was relabeled “Inmate Sex” on Friday. A breakdown of transgender inmates in federal prisons was no longer included.
The State Department on Friday removed the option to select “X” as a gender on passport applications for non-binary applicants. It also replaced the word “gender” from the descriptor with the word “sex.”
All State Department employees were ordered to remove gender-specific pronouns from their email signatures. The directive, from the acting head of the Bureau of Management, said this was required to comply with Trump’s executive orders and that the department was also removing all references to “gender ideology” from websites and internal documents.
“All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5:00 PM today,” said the order from Tibor Nagy. “Your cooperation is essential as we navigate these changes together.”
An official from the U.S. Agency for International Development said staffers were directed to flag the use of the word “gender” in each of thousands of award contracts.
Warnings against gender discrimination are standard language in every such contract.
The official said staffers fear that programs and jobs related to inclusion efforts, gender issues and issues specific to women are being singled out and possibly targeted under two Trump executive orders.
Some Census Bureau and National Park Service pages were also inaccessible or giving error messages.
Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office, calls for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and policies such as federal prison assignments.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the military to immediately stop recognizing identity a day before the start of February’s Black History Month, saying they “erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”
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