Devex: African countries to feel worst of U.S. health aid cuts, report says
“African countries, and those where abortion services are legal, will likely feel the greatest impacts of the United States’ expanded ‘global gag rule’ — also known as the Mexico City policy — according to new findings by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The U.S. provided bilateral global health assistance to 64 countries in Fiscal Year 2016 … the American health and policy research non-profit organization reported Thursday. … ‘The main take-away from this analysis is that the impact of the Mexico City policy is potentially far reaching — the policy prohibits legal activities in more than half the countries in which the U.S. government provides bilateral health assistance,’ Jennifer Kates, vice president and director of global health & HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Devex. ‘So, the extent that a foreign NGO wants to receive U.S. government health funding, they would, at the very least, have to certify compliance with the policy and, in some cases, discontinue legal activities,’ she said. … ‘This is especially the case for foreign NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa, since approximately 60 percent of the countries that allow for abortion in at least one instance not permitted by the Mexico City Policy are in this region,’ [Kates] wrote,” (Lieberman, 5/5).