Maine nonprofit's work in Haiti hampered by USAID shutdown

Yahoo

08-02-2025

Feb. 8—A Falmouth-based nonprofit announced Friday it was closing a long-running prenatal and newborn care program that served thousands in northern Haiti due to the Trump administration's attempt to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Konbit Sante had to stop its maternal care work at a public hospital serving a poor neighborhood in Cap-Haitien, the country's second-largest city, under orders from USAID, which provides it with $220,000 a year to buy medical supplies and pay 32 nurses and community outreach aides.
"Like everybody else, we were expecting some instability and tried to plan and prepare for it, but we never thought the country's entire foreign aid program would be eviscerated in the first two weeks of the new administration," said Perry Newman, Konbit Sante's executive director.
Newman had hoped last week's 90-day stop work order was temporary while President Donald Trump's new administration evaluated USAID programs, but that hope was dashed when the agency put all but a few hundred of its 10,000 employees on leave and recalled its overseas workers.
Trump left little doubt of his plan for USAID Friday. "CLOSE IT DOWN!" he said on his Truth Social page.
The closure has met with strong criticism from many Democrats who claim it is unconstitutional, and many international leaders who worry about the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the world's largest provider of foreign assistance. It is likely to be challenged in court.
Konbit Sante is not the only Maine nonprofit to be hit by the dismantling of USAID. MCD Global Health of Hallowell has had to halt its mission to combat malaria in Mozambique, Uganda and Niger. MCD is the recipient of a five-year, $27 million USAID grant.
USAID spent $240 million in Haiti in fiscal year 2023, federal records show. Humanitarian grants funding emergency food and disaster relief got the highest spend, at $89 million. Health care funding was second at $66 million. Maternal health care programs accounted for $15 million.
The loss of the funding means Konbit Sante will have to withdraw from Fort Saint Michel Health Center, a public hospital that serves a community of about 5,000 people who live in fragile dwellings built on garbage. Tuberculosis is the biggest public health challenge in this flood-prone community.
In 2009, Konbit Sante helped the 24-hour emergency clinic expand into women's health services by adding gynecology, obstetrics, and prenatal and postnatal care. In 2012, it funded the addition of a 17-bed maternity ward to the center's existing surgical room, laboratory and tuberculosis clinic.
USAID funding provides training, supplies and salaries to eight nurses and 24 community health workers who visit people in their homes to promote neonatal and postnatal referrals, malnutrition treatment and vaccinations and encourage pregnant women to give birth in the hospital.
Konbit Sante will continue to pay these employees through the end of the month out of its own funding, Newman said. But the program's closure will eventually put those nurses and health aides out of work in a country where unemployment hovers around 15%.
The facility staff that remain will be able to use up the remaining USAID-purchased medicines and medical supplies, but those will soon run out, Newman said. Konbit Sante is working with non-USAID agencies in Haiti to take on their maternal health care clients.
"It's a very bleak picture," Newman said. "With the stroke of a pen, an entire community will suffer. Others will step in to try to help, but they won't be able to fill the void. These women and children will suffer. Many lives will be changed, and sadly, some lives will be lost."
Fort Saint Michel Health Center is the only Konbit Sante program funded by a USAID grant. The rest of the organization's $750,000 annual budget comes from private contributions, Newman said. Konbit Sante will continue its maternal health care work at three other Haitian health centers.
The organization will direct some patients to a neonatal intensive care unit it is building at a health center 2-1/2 miles away, Newman said. It can take up to an hour to travel that distance by motorbike or flatbed truck taxi because of potholes, traffic jams and overturned vehicles.
"Imagine you're that mother on that bike with a sick child on your lap," he said. "Haiti is a high friction society. It's hard to find anything that can be easily accomplished here. But losing the ability to care for sick children where we find them, when we've been doing it for 20 years, it's soul crushing and it's cruel."
Konbit Sante has a long history in Haiti. It was founded in 2001 by Michael and Wendy Taylor of Portland, a dermatologist and marketing manager. Konbit Sante is a Haitian Creole phrase that means working together for health.
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