Dismantling USAID could lead to mass deaths – AIM report

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Dismantling USAID could lead to mass deaths – AIM report

5:10 CAT | 02 Jul 2025

File photo: USAID Press Office

The onslaught by the Trump regime against the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could lead to 14 million deaths in developing countries by 2030, according to an article in the latest issue of the prestigious medical journal, “The Lancet”.

USAID once provided 40 per cent of humanitarian funding worldwide. “The Lancet” article warned that the destruction of USAID could halt, and even throw into reverse, “two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations”.

The study in “The Lancet” journal was published as world and business leaders gathered for a United Nations conference on financing for development in the Spanish city of Seville this week hoping to bolster foreign aid for the developing world. But, under Trump, the United States is boycotting this conference.

Up until Trump’s return to the White House in January, USAID had provided over 40 per cent of global humanitarian funding. But, using fake claims of fraud and abuse of funds, Trump, and his then close ally, billionaire Elon Musk, set about wrecking USAID.

Musk even boasted gleefully of having put the Agency “through the woodchipper”. The world’s richest man was thus taking a chainsaw to the agency on which millions of the world’s poorest children depended for their health and survival

One of the study’s co-authors, Davide Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), warned that, for many low- and middle-income countries, the shock from dismantling USAID “would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.”

Looking back over data from 133 nations, the international team of researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. They also used modelling to project how funding being slashed by 83 percent – the figure announced by the Trump government itself – could affect death rates.

The cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, the projections found. That number included over 4.5 million children under the age of five – or around 700,000 child deaths a year.

Programmes supported by USAID were linked to a 15-percent decrease in deaths from all causes, the researchers found. For children under five, the drop in deaths was twice as steep at 32 percent.

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 were similarly cut in half.

The grim projections could change if other donors were to step in to fill the gap left by the US. However, this does not look likely, since key European donors, such as Germany, France and Britain are also cutting their aid budgets.
USAID did not account for a large percentage of the US budget. In fact, before the Trump/Musk cuts, USAID represented a mere 0.3 per cent of all US federal spending.

“US citizens contribute about 17 cents per day to USAID, around 64 dollars 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”, he said.

Source: AIM