ProPublica: Trump Is Donating Ventilators to Countries That Don’t Need or Can’t Use Them
“…White House officials have pushed the U.S. Agency for International Development to purchase thousands of the expensive devices from U.S. companies and donate them abroad, according to internal documents, emails seen by or described to ProPublica and interviews with officials. One USAID official recently referred to the project in an internal email as ‘the POTUS donation of ventilators,’ using an acronym for president of the United States. But the effort has been marked by dysfunction, with little clarity on how countries are chosen or how the ventilators are allocated. … The administration’s decisions on ventilator distribution appear to have little correlation to the number of coronavirus deaths or infections in a country. … The administration has said it is spending more than $200 million on donating ventilators, a little less than one-fifth of its promised coronavirus-related foreign aid. But public health experts said that without carefully assessing each country’s health care expertise — and following through to ensure hospitals can keep the machines running — the donations could go to waste or even risk patients’ lives…” (Torbati, 7/15).