More than 14 million of the world’s most vulnerable people, a third of them small children, could die by 2030 because of the Trump administration’s dismantling of US foreign aid, research projected on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The study in the prestigious Lancet journal was published as world and business leaders gather for a United Nations conference in Spain this week hoping to bolster the reeling aid sector.<\/p>\n
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) had provided over 40 percent of global humanitarian funding until Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, Trump’s then-close advisor — and world’s richest man — Elon Musk boasted of having put the agency “through the woodchipper”.<\/p>\n
The funding cuts “risk abruptly halting — and even reversing — two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations”, warned study co-author Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).<\/p>\n
“For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Looking back over data from 133 nations, the international team of researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91.8 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.<\/p>\n
That is more than the estimated number of deaths during World War II, history’s deadliest conflict.
\n– HIV, malaria to rise –<\/p>\n
The researchers also used modelling to project how funding being slashed by 83 percent — the figure announced by the US government earlier this year — could affect death rates.<\/p>\n
The cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found.<\/p>\n
That number included over 4.5 million children under the age of five — or around 700,000 child deaths a year.<\/p>\n
For comparison, around 10 million soldiers are estimated to have been killed during World War I.<\/p>\n
Programmes supported by USAID were linked to a 15-percent decrease in deaths from all causes, the researchers determined.<\/p>\n
For children under five, the drop in deaths was twice as steep, at 32 percent.<\/p>\n
USAID funding was found to be particularly effective at staving off preventable deaths from disease.<\/p>\n
There were 65 percent 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.<\/p>\n
Deaths from malaria and neglected tropical diseases were similarly cut in half.<\/p>\n
Study co-author Francisco Saute of Mozambique’s Manhica Health Research Centre said he had seen on the ground how USAID helped fight diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.<\/p>\n
“Cutting this funding now not only puts lives at risk — it also undermines critical infrastructure that has taken decades to build,” he stressed.<\/p>\n
A recently updated tracker run by disease modeller Brooke Nichols at Boston University estimates that nearly 108,000 adults and more than 224,000 children have already died as a result of the US aid cuts.<\/p>\n
That works out to 88 deaths every hour, according to the tracker.<\/p>\n
– ‘Time to scale up’ –<\/p>\n
After USAID was gutted, several other major donors, including France, Germany and the UK, followed suit in announcing plans to slash their foreign aid budgets.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But the grim projections are based on the current amount of pledged aid, so could rapidly come down if the situation changes, the researchers emphasised.<\/p>\n
Dozens of world leaders are meeting in the Spanish city of Seville this week for the biggest aid conference in a decade.<\/p>\n
The United States, however, will not attend.<\/p>\n
“Now is the time to scale up, not scale back,” Rasella said.<\/p>\n
Before its funding was slashed, USAID represented 0.3 percent of all US federal spending.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
dl\/gil<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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