Mozambique: NGO calls for reduction in health aid dependency

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Mozambique: NGO calls for reduction in health aid dependency

12:03 CAT | 14 Feb 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

The Citizen’s Observatory for Health said on Thursday that Mozambique should think about strategies to reduce external dependence in the face of the cut in US international aid, considering that the measure has an “enormous impact” on the country.

“As a country, we always have to think about how to reduce external dependence and how to improve cooperation because there are issues that Mozambique won’t be able to solve on its own; it needs the learning and support of other countries,” said Jorge Matine, in an interview with Lusa in Maputo.

According to the director of the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), more than 70% of Mozambique’s public health system for the areas of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, family planning and laboratories depends on funds from donors, including the US government, which is among the main ones. So, the suspension of funding has a “huge and significant impact” on the country’s health services.

“It’s a significant impact, there will be a paralysis of services (…) In less than three to six months, it’s very difficult for the government to mobilise enough resources to replace American funds, which will not be possible,” he said.

Jorge Matine defended the need for the Mozambican government to negotiate an “acceptable timeframe” with the US and other donors, between one and two years, to “gradually start thinking” about internal strategies for reorganising the financing of health services, warning of future “shocks”.

“We need to be able to learn that, as well as shocks from pandemics, we will have shocks like these from governments that we have no control over (…). So [we need to] better coordinate aid so that it is aid that does not create high dependency, but at the same time how to take advantage of cooperation to strengthen our national health system,” said the Citizen’s Observatory for Health director.

In the first days of his second term, US President Donald Trump suspended all international aid for 90 days, except for humanitarian food programmes and military aid to Israel and Egypt.

Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the region most affected by this decision.

Mozambique, for example, was allocated tens of millions of dollars in 2023 for HIV/AIDS and emergency food programmes.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be the new acting director of USAID, which he accused of being “completely lacking in response capacity”, criticising the “insubordination” in that body.

USAID – whose website disappeared on Saturday without explanation – has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the new administration.

Trump, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), entrepreneur Elon Musk, and some Republican congressmen have criticised USAID—which oversees humanitarian, development, and security programmes in around 120 countries—in increasingly harsh terms, accusing it of promoting progressive causes.

Source: Lusa