Nine-month-old Mohamad's death in Cameroon show how US aid cuts curtail malaria fight

Nine-month-old Mohamad suffered from a high fever for three days before his family took him to the nearest health center in northern Cameroon, but it was too late. He died of malaria that same day.

Mohamad’s death was part of a spike this year in malaria fatalities that local health officials attribute to foreign aid cuts by the United States.

Nine-month-old Mohamad’s malaria might have been diagnosed earlier by one of more than 2,000 U.S.-funded community health workers who would travel over rough dirt roads to reach the region’s remotest villages.

And at the health centre, he might have been treated with injectable artesunate, a life-saving drug for severe malaria paid for by U.S. funds that is now in short supply. But the centre had none to give out.

Reuters travelled to northern Cameroon – where the U.S. had played a leading role in the malaria response for nearly a decade – to document how the sudden cuts are contributing to delayed malaria diagnoses, inadequate treatment and a growing number of deaths.

This story is based on interviews with more than 20 doctors, nurses, community health workers, residents and former U.S. officials involved in malaria programming.

Mohamad’s father, sorghum and banana farmer Alhadji Madou Goni, is mourning a son he had hoped would one day escape poverty.

“I feel so sad about my loss. I hope no one suffers from this (malaria) again,” Goni, 30, told Reuters as he sat outside his home, his wife next to him holding prayer beads.

“Since there is hardship here, and people don’t have the means, we hope aid comes.”