You know about the US White House cancelling USAid and pulling out of all the countries they were helping. You might have heard them say that no one would die. In Zambia, like most of Sub-Saharan Africa, that is not true. Pastor Billiance Chondwe, previously the Director of USAid for the Copperbelt region, featured in many articles in NPR's Goats & Soda has found himself burying as many as 3 victims a week.

These are people who suddenly lost all access to vital medical care for diseases like HIV, cholera, dysentery, malaria and more, lost access to their health records (now under lock and key at shuttered USAid offices), lost all emergency care, and more. These are people living hundreds of miles from hospitals and cities where Zambia's government was focussing its aid, until now.

Thanks to Billy's tireless efforts and those of his 40 or so volunteers (many of whom worked for USAid before the pullout), we have become an essential partner to the Zambian Health Ministry. Aid Zambia was the very first NGO on the ground, beginning the fight against diseases unrelenting spread, bringing volunteer CHP's (Certified Health Professionals), medication, health education, and food aid packages to the most remote villages. We now partner with Zambia's Health Ministry who kindly provide us medical supplies and more, while we share knowledge gained from our efforts in 2025 and before, thanks to Billy's and others experiences with USAid. We now have an office where we can accept and package supplies, access to clean water, and now two rugged vehicles, including one ambulance, that are helping our work so much. But, the situation is desperate.

Thanks to USAid, Zambia and others had reduced incidence of these preventable diseases as much as to 30% of what it was, to the point where even HIV was becoming manageable and the millions of new orphans who had lost both parents to disease had dropped from nearly 2 million per year to a few hundred thousand (still, so heartrendingly sad...), but now, this trend is reversing. Parents are dying, leaving orphans who can't take care of themselves, go to school and live out happy lives. Mothers and fathers are too sick to work or feed their children, who are too hungry to study and pay attention at school. And every day, it has often seemed that things keep getting worse. But, you can help us reverse this tide.

Aid Zambia works with Zambia's Health Ministry to reach these remote villages, operating in local churches, mosques, and other social centers (even if a village has nothing, it will almost always have a house of worship), where we save patients needing to be driven to hospital, where we check in on others and get them their latest 90-day supply of medicine, take essential health tests, educate them on the importance of complying with medical instructions and how not to spread disease, and most importantly, leaving them with food aid packages made of fresh, local, healthy foods we purchase or are donated by local food merchants, some right by our office.

We hope, if we can be even more successful this year, to reach more than 35,000 villagers and transform from what we are now, just people giving everything they can in a day-to-day fight against disease, to an organization partnered with the Zambian Health Ministry to restore regular care to the villagers we serve and together, to help once again reverse the burgeoning tide of disease, as Zambians work to make their country prosperous, it's society well-functioning, and it's people happy and fulfilled.

Help Zambians helping Zambians in 2026