U.S. Global Health Funding Expires as Nepal Calls for Support
October 2, 2026
Editors' Note
This week, $1.3 billion in funding that the U.S. Congress had allocated for global health—aimed at addressing areas ranging from child health challenges to HIV/AIDS—expired.
Maine Senator Susan Collins had urged the administration to spend the money before the September 30, 2026, deadline, but programs had yet to receive the funds. In other funding news, the United States announced it was ceasing health aid payments to Zimbabwe because its government had rejected the United States' data sharing demands. Think Global Health's tracker highlights those and other new developments in the Trump administration's America First Global Health Strategy.
Heading to Nepal, freelance journalists Tanka Dhakal and Bhagirathi Pandit recount how financing to rebuild from August's catastrophic floods is scarce as health workers navigate trauma, destruction, and post-disaster health threats, such as insect- and water-borne diseases.
Shifting to the search by the World Health Organization (WHO) for its next director general, six candidates have officially entered the race. Independent analyst Summer Galloway explains why the WHO needs a reckoning before the next leader takes the reins—one that looks at how the global health system is broken and why.
Finally, as the U.S. midterm elections approach, two WHO medical epidemiologists, Howard L. Sobel and John C. S. Murray, describe how the country's retreat from global health and immunization threatens its health and economic security.
Until next week!—Allison Krugman, Interim Managing Editor, Katherine Leach-Kemon, Senior Contributing Editor, and Alejandra Martinez, Research Associate
When U.S. commitment to public health declines, so does the world's capacity to prevent the next crisis, say two medical epidemiologists with the World Health Organization
