More than 14 million people could die from Donald Trump’s foreign aid cuts, a new study has found.
Research published in the prestigious Lancet journal revealed that 4.5 million children under the age of five could die by 2030 as a result of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) being dismantled by the Trump administration.
It comes as world leaders this week gather for a UN conference in Spain with the aim of boosting the reeling aid sector.
USAID had provided over 40 percent of global humanitarian funding until Trump returned to the White House in January.
Two weeks into his second term, Trump’s then-close advisor and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, said he had put the agency ‘through the woodchipper’.
But the study’s co-author, Davide Rasella, has warned that the funding cuts ‘risk abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations’.
He added: ‘For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.’
Looking back over data from 133 nations, the researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.
USAID had provided over 40 percent of global humanitarian funding until Trump returned to the White House in January
Two weeks into his second term, Trump’s then-close advisor Elon Musk said he had put the agency ‘through the woodchipper’
They also used modelling to predict how funding being slashed by 83 per cent – the figure announced by the US government earlier this year – could affect death rates.
And they claim that the the cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030 with 700,000 children dying every year.
Programmes supported by USAID were linked to a 15 per cent decrease in deaths from all causes, the researchers found. For children under five, the drop in deaths was twice as steep at 32 per cent.
USAID funding was found to be particularly effective at staving off preventable deaths from disease.
There were 65 per cent fewer deaths from HIV/AIDS in countries receiving a high level of support compared to those with little or no USAID funding, the study found.
Deaths from malaria and neglected tropical diseases were similarly cut in half.
After USAID was gutted, several other major donors including Germany, the UK and France followed suit in announcing plans to slash their foreign aid budgets.
These aid reductions, particularly in the European Union, could lead to ‘even more additional deaths in the coming years,’ study co-author Caterina Monti of ISGlobal said.
But the grim projections for deaths were based on the current amount of pledged aid, so could rapidly come down if the situation changes, the researchers emphasised.
Dozens of world leaders are meeting in the Spanish city of Seville this week for the biggest aid conference in a decade. The US, however, will not attend.
‘Now is the time to scale up, not scale back,’ Rasella said.
Before its funding was slashed, USAID represented 0.3 percent of all US federal spending.
‘US citizens contribute about 17 cents per day to USAID, around $64 per year,’ said study co-author James Macinko of the University of California, Los Angeles.
‘I think most people would support continued USAID funding if they knew just how effective such a small contribution can be to saving millions of lives.’
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
