Peter’s Death Wasn’t Just Tragic — It Was a Policy Decision

PETER DONDE IS DEAD

He was ten years old.

Peter Donde was born with HIV — a condition his mother never asked for and never expected to pass on. For most of his short life, that virus had been kept at bay with antiretroviral medication provided through USAID-funded programs.

That lifeline ended in early 2025 when USAID funding was cut off, part of a sweeping political move designed to shrink America's role in global aid.

Peter’s mother — a widow who had already buried her husband after he succumbed to AIDS — walked for hours to the clinic that had kept her son alive. The shelves were empty. No medication. No answers. No plan.

There was nothing left to give her.

THE LAST DAYS

Peter fought to hold on. At first, it was just fatigue — exhaustion that never quite went away. Then the cough started — dry and persistent, until his breathing grew heavier and slower.

By the time pneumonia set in, Peter was too weak to get out of bed. His mother carried him back to the clinic, but the few staff still working there had nothing left to give.

Health worker Moses Okeny Labani, who knew Peter and his family, later said:

"If USAID would be here, Peter Donde would not have died."

But USAID wasn’t there. The money was gone. The medicine was gone. The doctors were gone.

Peter’s body was buried in a shallow grave beside his father’s.

THIS WASN’T AN ACCIDENT

Peter didn’t die because there was no cure. He didn’t die because his condition was untreatable.

He died because a group of men in Washington — men who never knew his name — decided that South Sudan’s healthcare system wasn’t worth funding.

In mid-2024, Republican lawmakers, emboldened by figures like Elon Musk, began pushing to gut USAID’s budget. Musk’s social media platform amplified claims that USAID funding was riddled with corruption and waste — a “globalist scam,” as Musk put it.

The push worked. By the end of 2024, key USAID programs were frozen. When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the remaining aid pipelines were cut off almost immediately.

The South Sudanese healthcare system — already fragile — couldn’t survive that blow. Clinics shuttered. HIV patients lost access to their medication. Tuberculosis treatment programs collapsed. Malaria clinics went dark.

People didn’t die because they were too sick to save — they died because rich men in powerful places decided they weren’t worth the cost.

THE ONES STILL STANDING

After USAID pulled out, volunteers stepped in. Mutual Aid Sudan — a coalition of teachers, students, and community leaders — refused to let their people die quietly.

They built makeshift kitchens. They set up Emergency Response Rooms — improvised medical hubs where volunteers treated wounds, rationed medicine, and found ways to stretch their supplies just a little longer.

They’ve kept over 4 million people alive since USAID’s collapse. But now, those volunteers are running out of food, medicine, and time.

They’ve lost 80% of their funding, and they’re begging for help — not for themselves, but for the families they’re still fighting to save.

PETER SHOULDN’T BE GONE

Peter Donde’s name should never have been etched into a gravestone. He should have been playing with his cousins, laughing with his friends, and chasing birds through the fields near his village.

Instead, he died in his mother’s arms — not because medicine didn’t exist, but because it sat in a warehouse somewhere far away, blocked by paperwork and politics.

Peter didn’t have to die. And now, there are thousands more like him — sick children, terrified mothers, desperate families — waiting to see if anyone still cares.

If you’re reading this, you can prove that someone still does.

Donate to Mutual Aid Sudan today: mutualaidsudan.org

Peter is gone. But someone else's child doesn’t have to be.

---

For more investigations like this, subscribe to Closer to the Edge. Because when the powerful turn their backs, the truth still needs to be told.