Geneva:

A central UN health agency warned on Tuesday that Washington’s aid cut could see 1,200 more women die from pregnancy and birth-bound causes in Afghanistan through 2028.

Shortly after his inauguration last month, Trump signed a executive order implementing a 90-day break in US foreign development assistance.

His administration later issued exceptions to food and other humanitarian help, but aid workers say the impact is already felt by some of the world’s most vulnerable.

In response, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has “suspended services funded by US grants that provide a lifeline for women and girls in crises, including in South Asia,” said Pio Smith, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency regional director of Asia and the Pacific.

“We are pretty concerned about the significant loss of financing,” he told journalists in Geneva.

He said the situation was particularly dramatic in Afghanistan, where a mother already dies of preventable pregnancy complications every two hours, making it one of the deadliest countries in the world for women to give birth.

For Afghanistan, “Between 2025 and 2028, we estimate that the absence of US support will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths and 109,000 additional unintended pregnancies,” Smith said.

“We have worked with the understanding that the agency as previous Republican administrations … The agency would be abolished,” Smith acknowledged, saying that efforts had been made to mitigate the risk.

But Smith said the agency did not expect the United States to stop funds already obliged to UNFPA by the gigantic USAID -Humanitarian agency, as it has now done. The stop order he said “is for funds already obliged to the agency and what we see is that programs that have focused on mothers and reproductive health and psychosocial support will be affected”.

Right in his region, Smith said “UNFPA requires over $ 308 million this year to maintain important services in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan”.