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WASHINGTON:
More than 22 million people, many of them children, could die preventable deaths by 2030 due to aid cuts by the United States and European countries, new research said Monday.
The findings are an update of a study earlier this year that said President Donald Trump’s sweeping reductions in assistance, including the dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), could lead to 14 million additional deaths.
The new research, seen by AFP, takes into account reductions in all official development assistance as Britain, France and Germany also slash their aid to the developing world.
“It is the first time in the last 30 years that France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States are all cutting aid at the same time,” said one of the new research’s authors, Gonzalo Fanjul, policy and development director at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).
“The European countries do not compare with the US, but when you combine all of them, the blow to the global aid system is extraordinary. It’s absolutely unprecedented,” he told AFP.
The research by authors from Spain, Brazil and Mozambique was submitted Monday to The Lancet Global Health and is awaiting peer review. The research is based off data on how aid in the past has reduced deaths, especially in preventable areas such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
In a scenario in which aid cuts turn out to be severe, the new research expects 22.6 million excess deaths by 2030, including 5.4 million children under the age of five.
The researchers gave a range of 16.3-29.3 million deaths to account for uncertainties, including which programs will be cut and whether there are external shocks such as wars, economic downturns or climate-related disasters.
A milder defunding scenario would see 9.4 million excess deaths, the research said.
Trump, in a cost-cutting spree advised by the world’s richest person Elon Musk, soon after taking office slashed foreign assistance by more than 80 percent and shut down USAID, which was the world’s largest aid agency and handled $35 billion in the 2024 fiscal year. AFP
