These three children died in the wake of the cutoff of funding from the U.S.Agency for International Development.
Their parents say that the loss of medical services supported by these funds played a role.From left: Abdullahi Ibrahim of Nigeria, age 10, suffered a fatal asthma attack.
Purity Wamboi of Kenya, 16, contracted tuberculosis.Ibrahim Garba of Nigeria, 8, succumbed to typhoid.
From left: David Augustine, Lameck Nyagudi and Kazeem Olawale Nasiru for NPR hide caption Abdullahi Ibrahim developed asthma when he was 5.Over time, it became increasingly serious."Sometimes he would wake up suddenly, gasping for air," recounts his father, Ibrahim Musa, through an interpreter.
"I feel very, very scared.We usually rush him to the hospital."They would take the motorcycle Musa uses as a taxi driver, Abdullahi sandwiched between his parents.Those visits, plus the drugs and inhalers, were usually free, says Esther Agbo, a nurse at Mucciya Primary Health Care who often interacted with the family living in the north of Nigeria, in Sabon Gari.
She says that the costs had been offset by USAID — the United States Agency for International Development."Because of that support," says Musa, "people like us who don't have much could still get treatment."Last year, when he was 10, Abdullahi had an especially severe asthma attack."He told me, 'Daddy, I can't breathe well,'" says Musa.
"He was just lying there, helpless.We rushed to the clinic."He says the clinic told them the drugs were no longer free of charge.
"USAID stopped supplying the treatment [for] free," says Agbo, who was not on duty there at the time."The cost of the medication was too much for the parents," she says.
Fatima Ibrahim sits alongside a portrait of her son, Abdullahi, in the family's one-room home in Sabon Gari, Nigeria....