Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food. On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: No one has died because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program.
Dr. Solomon Zewdu is based in South Africa and he says the thing that struck him most this General Assembly is that global health leaders are "talking in silos." "We're not hearing each other," he says. Some are having conversations about how dependent countries are on aid, while others are lamenting the cuts. "But now, what's the next step? Let's move on. There's urgency. Time kills people," he says. He's afraid "everybody's going to scatter, and then we might wait for the next summit to happen and, in between, people dying, people's health is being compromised."