In the fifth and final article in a new Wilson Center series on “medical diplomacy” in Latin America, the region hardest hit by COVID-19, Annie Pforzheimer, a former career U.S. diplomat, reflects on how the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) responded to Latin America’s unprecedented public health crisis.

In her article, “Pandemic Help to Latin America and the Caribbean: The Roles of USAID and the Department Of State,” Pforzheimer, a former director of the State Department’s Office of Andean Affairs, highlights barriers to a rapid and large-scale U.S. response, including the rapid spread of the virus in the United States, the evacuation of many U.S. personnel from diplomatic posts and restrictions on the export of medical products. The United States still played a critical role, including through the delivery of 3,486 ventilators to 13 countries in Latin America. But at least early on, Chinese assistance was far more prominent, Pforzheimer concludes: “Should another pandemic occur, the U.S. government should learn the lesson that there is no substitute for showing up, on time and at scale.”

Previous reports in this series, from the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program and Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, have examined China’s response to the coronavirus in Latin America and the impacts in Latin America of tensions between the United States and China. For more information on “medical diplomacy” in Latin America, please visit our interactive tracker and COVID-19 portal, where you can find previous papers in this series by Cynthia Sanborn, Jorge Heine, Haibin Niu and Jean Manes.