Public Health

The nearly 800,000 doses were part of a donation promised under the Biden administration, which was meant to deliver more than 1 million doses. Overall, the US, the European Union, and Japan pledged to collectively provide 5 million doses to nearly a dozen African countries. The US has only sent 91,000 doses so far, and only 220,000 currently still have enough shelf life to make it. The rest are expiring within six months, making them ineligible for shipping.

"For a vaccine to be shipped to a country, we need a minimum of six months before expiration to ensure that the vaccine can arrive in good condition and also allow the country to implement the vaccination," Yap Boum, an Africa CDC deputy incident manager, told Politico.

Politico linked the vaccines' lack of timely shipment to the Trump administration's brutal cuts to foreign aid programs as well as the annihilation of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which administered those aid programs.

A study published last month in The Lancet, estimated that funding and support from the USAID saved the lives of nearly 92 million people in 133 countries between 2001 and 2021, including the lives of over 30 million children under the age of 5. The study projected that the Trump administration's cuts will cost over 14 million lives by 2030—including 4.5 million children under age 5—unless the cuts are reversed.