Harare, Zimbabwe – Precious Mvundura woke up with joint pain, a high fever and a pounding headache on a chilly autumn morning in eastern Zimbabwe.The 37-year-old initially thought it was just the flu. But when the headache persisted for three days, she became worried.Her five-year-old son had also fallen ill and was sweating heavily.In early May, the pair sought help from a village health worker in Chishakwe, a rural farming community outside Zimbabwe’s third-largest city, Mutare. Both tested positive for malaria.“I felt relieved,” Mvundura told Al Jazeera.“From the moment I took that medication, I started getting better.”Her son has also recovered and is back in school.Their ordeal comes as malaria cases and deaths surge across Zimbabwe after US funding cuts disrupted key malaria control programmes.Shortly after returning to office for a second term in 2025, US President Donald Trump slashed foreign aid funding, including programmes backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In Zimbabwe, the cuts disrupted tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria research, prevention and treatment programmes.Among the affected initiatives were the Zimbabwe Entomological Support Programme in Malaria (ZENTO) at Africa University in Mutare, which provided scientific research to support the country’s National Malaria Control Programme, and the Zimbabwe Assistance Programme in Malaria II (ZAPIM II), which helped strengthen malaria diagnosis, treatment and prevention in high-burden districts. Advertisement USAID had disbursed $270m for health and agriculture programmes in Zimbabwe in 2024.Malaria cases j …
