“That’s what American tax dollars were funding,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently wrote on his Twitter account, reacting to the news report that said India’s first trangender clinic Mitr shutdown in Hyderabad due to USAID fund freeze. Musk’s comment, laced with sarcasm, implied how the American money was being ‘wasted’ on a transgender healthcare facility.
However, little does the DOGE head have the macro picture in place or the contribution of the facility to those living on the margins.
The Mitr (friend) Clinic, started in 2021 in the southern city of Hyderabad, offered HIV treatment, medical support, counselling, and mental health services to thousands of transgenders in India. In January, President Trump stopped foreign aid through a crackdown on USAID. Two more Mitr Clinics in Thane and Pune have shut operations since.
USAID, the US agency overseeing humanitarian aid to foreign countries since the 1960s, has been responsible for scores of development and charitable programmes in poor and developing countries around the world. While Trump, on his part, reasons that he wants overseas spending to align with his America First approach, back in India, the shutting down of these clinics has impacted the transgender community, which was already struggling with limited access to medical support and mental health services.
Backstory on the Mitr
While not being able to access medical treatment at subsidised rates is the most apparent setback to the community, it is the lack of inclusivity at regular medical clinics which made Mitr all the more instrumental. The project came into being under the US President’s agency for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003 under the George Bush administration. John Hopkins University, in collaboration with USAID, along with the Indian government, had set up the project.
Transgender community, already living on the margins
According to India HIV Estimations 2023 report, over 2.5 million people are living with HIV in India, the third highest HIV population in the world. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation, estimated annual new infections stand at 62.97 thousand. The Humsafar Trust, based in Mumbai, is one of the oldest initiatives for LGBTQ community providing healthcare services like treatment, prevention and counselling in cases of HIV, STIs, OIs and other comorbid conditions and issues.
A few other organisations also exist, catering exclusively to LGBTQ community, but they aren’t nearly enough for the total population of around 4.88 lakh transgenders in India, as per 2011 census. As for the general state-run and private hospitals, it is either lack of affordability or lack of inclusivity that holds LGBTQ patients back. Even though it was in 2018 that the Government of India decriminalised Section 377, that did not result in the end of discrimination against the community.
Will USAID freeze actually put “America first”
Many geopolitical experts rue that it is Trump’s linear thinking clouding the judgement where he does not see a transactional value in providing world aid. At stake is America’s long-standing goodwill, position as a leader, a provider. On Wednesday this week, a sharply divided Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid. The emergency appeal from the Republican administration was rejected by a 5-4 vote. Notably, this is the second time the new administration has failed to persuade the court on the same.
Repercussions are far and wide
Mitr is not the only organisation to have suffered the wrath of Trump’s policy updates. Programmes to tackle crucial HIV, polio, Mpox, and bird flu have all been significantly affected by the fund freeze on tens of billions of dollars overseas aid from the US, said the head of the World Health Organisation.
While Trump labels the aid as “totally unexplainable”, it is nothing short of an existential crisis for those affected. Meanwhile, the community and staff members of Mitr continue their search for alternate sources of funding.
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged the Trump administration to at least not put an immediate unnotified freeze on the funds. During a briefing recently, he urged the officials to resume aid funding until other solutions can be found to HIV treatments and other services that have been reportedly disrupted in as many as 50 countries.
Ethiopia has been particularly left scrambling for survival. The African country was the largest recipient of US aid assistance for the causes of food, health, support of refugees and sexual abuse survivors. The efforts to curtail America’s overseas spending are set to have ramifications for human rights around the world and that itself will likely boomerang on the US. Partly because health experts have warned, “diseases don’t respect borders.”
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