Trump aid spending freeze halts leading malaria vaccine programme
Source: The Guardian
Trump aid spending freeze halts leading malaria vaccine programme
Global collaboration with US researchers likely to be set back by years, including on spread of drug-resistant HIV
Kat Lay, Global health correspondent
Sun 2 Feb 2025 07.00 GMT
Last modified on Sun 2 Feb 2025 07.03 GMT
A flagship programme to create malaria vaccines has been halted by the Trump administration, in just one example of a rippling disruption to health research around the globe since the new US president took power.
The USAid Malaria Vaccine Development Program (MVDP) – which works to prevent child deaths by creating more effective second-generation vaccines – funds research by teams collaborating across institutes, including the US university Johns Hopkins and the UK’s University of Oxford.
Earlier this week, it told partners to stop work, after the president and his allies ordered a freeze on US spending. Researchers warned that the impact of the abrupt halt on other programmes could fuel the spread of drug-resistant HIV, and put medical progress back by years.
The MVDP’s aim is “to reduce the impact of malaria on children living in malaria-endemic areas of the world”. In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 450,000 under-5s are killed by malaria each year.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/02/trump-aid-spending-freeze-halts-leading-mvdp-malaria-vaccine-programme