More than 14 million of the world’s most vulnerable people, one -third of them young children, could die because Trump administration dismantled US foreign aid, projected on Tuesday.
The study in the prestigious Lancet Journal was published as world and business leaders gather for a UN conference in Spain this week in the hope of strengthening the rolling auxiliary sector.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) had delivered over 40% of global humanitarian funding until Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
Two weeks later, Trump’s then close adviser and the world’s richest man-elon musk boasted over having set the agency “through Woodchipper”.
The funding is cut down “suddenly risks stopping-and even turning to decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations,” warned the study of co-author Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (Isglobal).
“For many countries with low and middle -income, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale with a global pandemic or a larger armed conflict,” he said in a statement.
Looking back on data from 133 nations, the international team of researchers estimated that USAID financing had prevented 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.
They also used modeling to project how funding was cut by 83% – the figure announced by the US government earlier this year – could affect the death rates.
The cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found. This number included over 4.5 million children under five years or about 700,000 child deaths per year.
In comparison, about 10 million soldiers are estimated to have been killed during World War I.
Programs supported by USAID were linked to a 15% decrease in deaths for all reasons, the researchers found. For children under five, the fall in death had twice as steep of 32%.
USAID financing was found to be particularly effective in warding off preventable deaths as a result of illness.
There were 65% fewer deaths as a result of HIV/AIDS in countries that received a high level of support compared to those with little or no USAID financing, the study found. Deaths resulting from malaria and neglected tropical diseases were similarly cut in half.
Time to scale up
After USAD was blurred, several other major donors, including Germany, the UK and France followed after announcing plans to cut their foreign aid budgets.
These aid reductions, especially in the European Union, could lead to “even more additional deaths in the coming years,” said student author Caterina Monti of Isglobal.
But the bleak projections for death were based on the current amount of pledged help so that they could quickly come down if the situation changes, the researchers emphasized.
Dozens of world leaders meet in the Spanish city of Sevilla this week for the biggest aid conference of a decade. However, the United States will not participate.
“Now it’s time to scale up, don’t scale back,” Rasella said.
Before financing was cut, USAID represented 0.3% of all US federal expenses.
“American citizens contribute about 17 cents per day to USAID, about $ 64 per year,” said student author James Macinko of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I think most people would support continued USAD financing if they knew how effectively such a small contribution can be to save millions of lives.”
