Trump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report says

President Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.

A third of those at risk of premature deaths were children, researchers projected.

Low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock "comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict," said Davide Rasella, who co-authored the report.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that over 80% of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been cancelled. The Trump administration has taken aim at what it sees as wasteful spending.

The controversial cutbacks - which were condemned around the world by humanitarian organisations - were overseen by Elon Musk. The billionaire was then leading an initiative to shrink the federal workforce.

During his second term, Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his "America First" approach.

The USAID funding cuts "risk abruptly halting - and even reversing - two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations," said the statement from Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.

In their report, Rasella and his fellow researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented more than 90 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.

They modelled the potential impact on death rates with an assumption that funding would be cut by 83% – the figure provided by Rubio in March.

The researchers suggested that the cuts could lead to a "staggering" number of more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030.

That would include the deaths of more than 4.5 million children under the age of five, they added.

Cover photo: REUTERS