Cameroon and the Malaria Response: What Happened When Funding Stopped

The U.S. pause of foreign aid in early 2025 disrupted the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) in Cameroon, a program that had supplied bed nets, medicines and funding for local teams. PMI had made Cameroon a focus country since 2017 and helped reduce deaths in several regions. While some emergency services continued, the pause forced implementers to stop normal activities and lay off staff.

In the Far North region PMI supported about half of community health workers; the National Malaria Control Programme confirmed that 2,105 out of 2,354 U.S.-funded workers were no longer working. A stop-work order and frozen payments created shortages of injectable artesunate and delayed net distributions. A limited waiver in February 2025 allowed life-saving services to restart, but many programmes remained disrupted.

The World Health Organization notes that bed net campaigns and seasonal prevention had reduced deaths before the funding cuts, so leaders fear that these gains may be reversed. Therefore local health teams try to protect children during the rainy season with what they still have. However, gaps in surveillance and data collection make it hard to measure the full impact.