Global Health Security in Jeopardy: How Dismantling USAID Weakens Uganda's Global Health Security Architecture and How Remittances Might Be a Game Changer

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had been a leading contributor to Uganda’s health care and disease prevention and treatment responses. In this paper I analyze how dismantling USAID has had negative impacts on Uganda’s health financing and consequently, on global health security. However, it this crisis opens up an opportunity for Uganda to work towards more health resilient systems that do not need to rely heavily on foreign assistance. Uganda is still below the required 12% domestic resource allocation to health in its national budget as stipulated under the Abuja Declaration. I argue that although foreign assistance is good to the extent it helps build national capacity, it may also contribute to weakening individual country health systems structures if not used prudently.Past a certain threshold, foreign assistance makes countries vulnerable to donor shifts as a result of over- dependence on donor funds. As a result, countries like Uganda are then more vulnerable to epidemics and disease outbreaks at a time when little or no financial aid is available to them by donors. The existing weak health structures make the situation even worse. Global health security is then jeopardized because there are greater risks of diseases being spread beyond the country’s borders and a looming possibility of eroding past gains. I argue that global health security heavily depends on how resilient a country’s health system is in the wake of an abrupt and substantial loss of funding, and Uganda’s priority should be strengthening its health systems in order to promote global health security.The first section of this paper demonstrates the role played by the U.S. in Uganda’s Health Security. The second section discusses the impact of dismantling USAID on Uganda’s health security. Section three explores strengthening Uganda’s health security under the America First Global Health Strategy, and section four addresses leveraging remittances.