DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Barnali Das waits outside her doctor’s office with her 4-month-old baby. Dr. Md. Shirajul Islam Sumon treated Das for tuberculosis when she was pregnant. Now, she wants to know why her baby has a worsening cough.
But Sumon isn’t there. He was laid off, along with more than 1,600 others, when the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research stopped 10 of its projects in January. Those projects offered free TB services to patients. The work stoppage came when United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order that led to a pause in nearly all US-funded foreign aid projects. Nearly all employees of the United States Agency for International Development have been laid off.
Das, 19, is left without treatment for her infant. She points to a tuberculosis-prevention poster at the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital, famously known as the TB Hospital. The poster features a picture of Sumon.
“This was our doctor,” she says. “An expert to cure TB.”
For now, Dr. Ahmed Anowar is attending Sumon’s former patients. The treatment has to be free or more people will contract the illness, he says.
“This is a life-threatening situation for the marginalized communities,” he says.
Patients rest and wait at the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital, widely known as the TB Hospital, in Mohakhali, Dhaka. The hospital provides critical diagnosis and treatment services for tuberculosis and other chest diseases, but resource shortages threaten its ability to continue offering free care.
AKM Tariful Islam Khan, senior communications manager for the research center, says all USAID-funded projects have been shut down until further notice.
“Following the US government’s directive,” he says, “we have suspended all projects and research activities funded by them until further notice.”
The projects that were abruptly canceled included work on tuberculosis, nutrition, fungal infection surveillance, and viral spillover from animals to humans.
Details on US funding for tuberculosis-related projects in Bangladesh are hard to find. The US government abruptly shut down the USAID website, and all data, once freely available, disappeared. USAID staff have since been locked out of its headquarters in Washington, DC.
According to a 2021 press release issued by the US Embassy in Bangladesh, the US invested at least US$100 million over the past 10 years to combat tuberculosis in the country and donated 72 rapid TB testing machines.
Bangladesh ranks seventh in the world for number of tuberculosis cases, according to the World Health Organization. Globally, 10.8 million people contracted TB in 2023, and 1.2 million people died. TB is highly contagious, passed on when an infected person speaks, sings or coughs, and it’s especially dangerous in enclosed areas, like the small homes and dense urban settlements where many in Bangladesh live.
Momtaj Begum, 85, holds a photograph of her grandson, Ridoy, 14, who died while undergoing TB treatment. Begum recovered from tuberculosis two years ago thanks to foreign aid programs that are now being cut. “My grandson was my only hope,” she says. “I have no one left in the world now.”
Taslima Begum lives in Beguntila, an informal settlement with rickety shelters and virtually nonexistent infrastructure. She’s had TB three times and recovered, she says, because of early-detection systems that wouldn’t exist were it not for foreign aid programs. Now, she fears for her 2-year-old granddaughter. People will die if free tests and data collection stop, she says.
And there’s another consequence — one that’s often disregarded as people with few resources bear the brunt of some of the world’s most contagious illnesses.
“If poor people remain untreated,” she says, “rich people will be infected, too.”
