'Dangerous for the U.S. and humanity': Ex-USAID official warns Fox News over Trump's purge

Atul Gawande, former head of global health at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), warned that President Donald Trump's purge of the agency was "Dangerous for the U.S. and humanity."

In an interview on Monday, Fox News host Bret Baier asked Gawande to respond to concerns about government spending.

"What's happening right now is dangerous for the United States and humanity," he said of the shutdown of USAID services. "These are people shutting down an agency and having no clue the work that is being done."

"I led global health at USAID, and I can tell you, these are programs touching hundreds of millions of people around the world on a budget that's half the budget of the hospital where I do surgery," he continued. "There is an Ebola outbreak right now in Uganda that is killing people. And USAID, all activities have been shut down. That work is critical, and it's not even happening.

"I can go on down the list, eradication of malaria and polio and so on. This is dangerous. It is bad for American security."

Baier suggested that "the people who voted for President Trump" wanted "to purge some of these programs."

"What do you say to them?" the Fox News anchor asked.

"A top-to-bottom review of what is being done and a change in policies is a normal way of doing business, and that is appropriate in any administration," Gawande explained. "But a shutdown of work that is predominantly disaster assistance, it is global health, it's demining countries around the world, including Cambodia and Vietnam, so that agriculture can be resumed by farmers, that critical work affects millions."

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"You don't need to pause it, and there's no such thing as a pause of an airplane in flight," he added. "You get exactly the damage that that produces."

Watch the video below from Fox News.