US aid cuts to Palestinians have disrupted breast cancer therapy

Published: 8 March 2019

Last updated: 4 March 2024

More than 1,000 women who had mammograms done through a US-funded program have had to seek other treatment options

WOMEN CONFRONTING BREAST CANCER are being hit hard after the Trump administration stopped USAID programs benefiting Palestinians, say aid groups, doctors, health care workers, and patients.

The US effectively stopped government aid programs benefiting Palestinians in February, and humanitarian aid groups and hospital administrators in Gaza and Jerusalem say aid cuts are doing serious harm to vulnerable patients at a time when health care systems used by Palestinians are already heavily strained.

Aid funding from the US totalling hundreds of millions of dollars benefiting Palestinians were cut off last year before Washington effectively ended aid to the West Bank and Gaza last month, moves critics say have had a devastating impact on health care programs, politicizing human health.

Among the programs stopped as a result of the cuts is one that was optimistically dubbed Gaza Health Matters 2020, a US$50 million project that was supposed to run for five years, providing prenatal care for Palestinian women, treating the injured in Gaza, and funding mammograms and biopsies for women.

FULL STORY Trump’s cuts to aid for Palestinians have totally disrupted women’s breast cancer treatments (Buzzfeed)

Photo: Sanaa Bilbesi and Abla Abu Ajwa, who are both from Gaza, receive chemotherapy in the oncology ward at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem (Corinna Kern/Buzzfeed)