LESS than two months after the Jamaica Observer broke the news that local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS were battling for survival, the crisis has worsened with the Donald Trump Administration announcing the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Initially Trump had announced that the work of USAID — the leading donor to Jamaican non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the fight against HIV/AIDS — would be suspended for 90 days, but on Monday the Administration said the giant humanitarian agency will be “shutting down” as part of his radical — and critics say unconstitutional — drive to shrink the US Government.

Employees at USAID, which runs aid programmes in about 120 countries, including Jamaica, were instructed by e-mail not to go to their offices Monday. Some 600 staffers found themselves locked out of their computer systems.

Elon Musk, Trump’s close adviser, called USAID “a criminal organisation” and declared “you’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing”.

The news was the death knell for several local NGOs which receive the bulk of their funding from USAID.

While the NGOs are yet to issue any public response, sources close to these entities told the Observer that, while they were in a wait-and-see mode following the announcement of the suspension of USAID work, they are now looking to wind up operations or will significantly scale down their operations.

According to the sources, Claudette Richardson-Pious, executive director of Children First agency, has already sent home her staff and indicated that the non-profit charity — which supports children, mobilises them to overcome poverty, and gives them educational tools to improve their lives — will be mothballed.

Also hard hit is the more than 30-year-old Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL), the island’s first NGO established specifically to respond to HIV.

The usually media-friendly organisation has gone silent, but sources say the leadership of JASL has already indicated to its staff that it will have to significantly scale down its operation while existing on donations from other international agencies.

In 2023 JASL received US$8 million ($1.2 billion) in funding from USAID to operate its HIV prevention and education programmes designed to reduce the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Jamaica.

JASL operates a treatment, care and support programme which includes clinic sessions with a doctor and nurse, drugs for opportunistic infections and treatment of HIV/STIs, over-the-counter drugs and medical supplies, and psychological counselling for people who test positive for the disease through its three stations across the island..

The NGO also provides financial support for a number of smaller NGOs with a share of its subvention from USAID.

Last November, Kandasi Walton-Levermore, executive director of JASL, told Observer editors and reporters that the entity was facing a reduction in aid from international donor agencies and that was before its biggest donor, USAID, was shut down.

“Right now I am in the fight of my life to get some funding to continue my treatment services at JASL. One of the things about JASL treatment programmes is that they are of a comprehensive nature, and this has allowed us to see results — and I say without apology — way better than you would experience in public health facilities,” said Walton-Levermore.

“A lot of the work we do at JASL we do through funding from international donors. However, we are improving; the country is a middle-income country and so international funding is not necessarily being poured into Jamaica right now, plus the Government does have a narrative that we have the resources here, and there are things that we can do, we are building our own programme, and there are resources that are available,” Walton-Levermore said.

She pointed out that without the support from international donors JASL will struggle to pay doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists “who have made such a huge impact on the programme”.

Walton-Levermore noted that JASL gets a monthly subvention of $60,000 from the Government, “which we are grateful for, because it pays the water bill”.

“One of the things that we have been saying a lot to the Government is, ‘Look at your civil society partners, we have been with you from the beginning,’ and for an organisation such as JASL, which is 33 years old this year, we would have been at the front of the HIV response.

“We would have walked this path with the Government as partners and helped with the country’s results, but still the Government doesn’t have a framework or a system of how it supports entities like JASL to ensure we continue the work that we are doing,” said Walton-Levermore during that meeting at the Observer.

In the meantime, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he had been put in charge of USAID and he would stop its “insubordination” to Trump’s agenda, after Musk vowed to destroy the agency whose website went dark over the weekend.

Rubio confirmed he and the State Department had assumed control of the autonomous body.

Several Government programmes will also be hard hit by the closure of USAID, but the Andrew Holness Administration has so far only said it is examining the situation.

— Additional reporting by AFP