When Foreign Aid Disappeared, The Carter Center Stepped Up

Ten million people across Ethiopia and Mozambique were going to lose access to $98 million worth of trachoma-fighting antibiotics. But a $5 million emergency commitment from The Carter Center changed that, preventing what would’ve been a public health disaster.

Cuts to U.S. Agency for International Development early in 2025 threatened infectious disease programs across the world, especially in regions in Africa where The Carter Center is active.

Mass drug administration programs were particularly at-risk. An essential piece of the disease-prevention puzzle, these programs leverage donations from pharmaceutical companies to distribute key medicines to vulnerable populations.

Interrupting these programs would waste drugs and undermine years of progress in eliminating the disease.

And so, The Carter Center stepped in.

“The cuts scattered pieces of a puzzle that public health practitioners have been assembling for a decade,” said Carter Center Trachoma Control Program Director Kelly Callahan. “Losing any piece would’ve been terrible, but we helped stop what might have been calamitous.”

The Center provided $5 million in stopgap funding to trachoma programs operated by peer organizations in Ethiopia and Mozambique that were impacted by cuts. The move ensures millions of people, including people in refugee camps, won’t miss treatments of Pfizer-donated azithromycin.

“If this work had been paused or stopped altogether, it would have set us back by two to three years,” Callahan said. “As we’re in the business of accelerating that timeline, that would’ve been terrible for our goal of eliminating trachoma.”

The Center also provided stopgap funding to research partner The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to ensure that the work of Tropical Data, a data system that tracks the prevalence of infectious tropical diseases, was not interrupted. Most importantly, Tropical Data trains “master graders”— medical doctors who can train other health professionals to inspect eyelids for early-stage trachoma. Graders track an increase or decrease in the disease across the region, tracing whether interventions are working and showing where antibiotic treatments should continue.

Extending funding to other organizations is new territory for The Carter Center, but Callahan said it’s what’s needed right now.

“The Carter Center is constantly pushing the envelope in accelerating the elimination of trachoma. But helping others, almost like a donor, is a new thing for us,” Callahan said. “It’s an important move, at a very critical time, to meet the moment.”