In Kenya's largest and poorest county, the despair of a beleaguered hospital director is palpable as he explains that the dismantling of American-funded aid means his facility will run out of USAID drugs next month. "From then on, I don't know," Ekiru Kidalio said, worried about the lack of treatment for measles and HIV, among other things.
Northernmost Turkana county borders Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda and is home to just under a million people, according to a 2019 census, a third of them refugees, many dependent on foreign assistance.
President Donald Trump's administration has announced dramatic cuts to USAID, whose annual budget was close to $43 billion, more than 40 percent of the world's humanitarian aid.
The decisions, taken thousands of kilometres (miles) away in Washington, are already being felt in Turkana's Lodwar County Referral Hospital, Kidalio, its acting director, said.
