#humanitarian-aid-coordination

#humanitarian-aid-coordination

Romero's kidneys were failing, and he went on dialysis. He described his health decline as a crack in a windshield that progressively worsened. 'It got really bad last year,' he said.

In the Al-Taghreba shelter in Khan Younis, the displaced refused to let the rituals of Ramadan die. They made their own decorations, recycling cola cans into radiant lanterns that hung between the tents.

Aid cuts could lead to more than 22 million avoidable deaths by 2030, including 5.4 million children under five, according to the most comprehensive modelling to date. In the past two decades there have been dramatic falls in the number of young children dying from infectious diseases, driven by aid directed to the developing world, researchers wrote in the Lancet Global Health. But that progress was at risk of reversal because of abrupt budget cuts by donor countries, including the US and the UK.

NPR's global health and development team tells stories about life in our changing world, focusing on low- and middle-income countries also referred to as the Global South. And we keep in mind that we're all neighbors in this global village. NPR receives financial support for this team from the Gates Foundation. NPR is solely responsible for all content. Find more about NPR's standards and practices at NPR.org/ethics, as well as a list of our philanthropic supporters in our annual report.

At least three aid workers have been killed and four others wounded in a drone attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on an aid convoy in Sudan's South Kordofan state, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, in the latest carnage against civilians caught up in the nation's brutal civil war. The convoy of trucks carrying food and humanitarian supplies was targeted by the RSF, and its ally, the Sudan People's

In 2025, the administration of US President Donald Trump ordered the US Agency for International Development to be closed; this year, it withdrew the country from 66 international organizations. Other Western nations that are plagued with high levels of debt and pressure to prioritize domestic challenges have slashed their foreign aid, too. According to projections, official development assistance dropped by 9-17% in 2025, amounting to some US$55 billion.

In the full glare of the world's media spotlight, Israel has been conducting its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza while the mass killing of civilians in Sudan has not stopped since the outbreak of that country's war in 2023. Violence is ongoing elsewhere from Myanmar's civil war to conflict in Nigeria. Drone attacks targeting noncombatants have become commonplace in Ukraine while massacres of civilians across multiple conflicts continue, including in Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar, Yemen all with apparent impunity.

Life is cautiously returning to the streets of Dilling, the second largest city in South Kordofan state, after the Sudanese army broke a suffocating siege that had isolated the area for more than two years. For months, the city had been encircled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), cutting off vital supply lines and trapping civilians in a severe humanitarian crisis.

Since October's ceasefire, which meant Israel would allow some - but not nearly enough - aid trucks to enter our besieged Strip, people in Gaza have desperately been eating, whenever possible, what they had been deprived of previously. Yet, as a result, many have developed " refeeding syndrome," which is a serious medical condition. Refeeding syndrome occurs when food is suddenly reintroduced after a prolonged period of starvation - and Israel has subjected those of us in Gaza to such periods on multiple occasions.

This psychological limbo was highlighted this week by the case of Hamza Adwan, a 67-year-old detainee whose family was informed of his death on Sunday four months after he actually died in custody on September 9, 2025. Adwan, a father of nine who had already lost two sons before the war, was arrested at a checkpoint on November 12, 2024. According to his family, he was detained despite suffering from serious health issues, including heart disease, and requiring constant medical care.

Like thousands of other sick and wounded Palestinians, I am slowly dying, trapped between a devastated health system and a heavily restricted border. As I write these lines, I am receiving treatment at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for kidney disease. Actually, I don't know whether what I am receiving can actually be termed treatment or if it is only an attempt to postpone the inevitable.

Montaha Omer Mustafa, 18, was among many people who managed to get out of el-Fasher before the city's seizure by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, but only after paying for passage and going days on foot with little water, moving through villages and scrubland. As fighting closed in on the last big city held by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in North Darfur state, tens of thousands of residents fled westwards, abandoning homes, possessions, and even family members.