Nine-month-old baby Mohamat burned with fever for three days before his family took him to the closest health center in northern Cameroon, but it was too late. He died of malaria that day.

Mohamat's death was part of a spike this year in malaria fatalities that local health officials attribute to foreign aid cuts by the United States.

Before the cuts, Mohamat might have been diagnosed earlier by one of more than 2,000 U.S.-funded community health workers who would travel over rough dirt roads to reach the region's remotest villages.