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editor's note
A participant in a Uganda poverty program with the goats he raises/Claire Harbage/NPR
Dear readers,
The year 2025 has seen unprecedented changes in the world of global health and development. The freeze on U.S. foreign aid and the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development have had a powerful impact.
And after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May that "No one has died because of USAID [cuts]," we interviewed a mother in Nigeria whose son had sickle cell anemia and was running a fever. She took him to a U.S.-funded clinic where he'd gotten free care in the past. But the clinic had received a stop-work order as the U.S. reviewed contracts and programs it was funding. A guard told her the facility was closed. The boy died that night.
This week we look at other consequences of the aid shakeup. In Uganda, an innovative program aims to help people "graduate" from poverty by letting them borrow from a pool of cash. Only when an economist went to check on how things were going, he was puzzled to learn that people were reluctant to take out loans.
This will be the last newsletter of 2025. We'll be back the first week of the new year. And in the week ahead we'll be publishing our "best" lists -- most popular stories, outstanding photo-driven stories, stories that we loved but that didn't get the audience we'd hoped for.
I also want to thank our readers for their emails. It means so much to hear from you, and we hope you continue sharing your views with us in the year ahead -- at goatsandsoda@npr.org.
Why I volunteered to be infected with dengue fever
The U.S. has registered over half a million clinical trials since 2000. Here's a look at the business and ethics of human medical experimentation through the eyes of a volunteer.
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