Around 14 million people - one-third of them small children - could die due to US funding cuts to United Nations aid programs, a Lancet study revealed on Tuesday.
The findings of the research were published as the civil and business leaders gather for the UN conference in Seville, Spain, this week, hoping to invest in the critical aid sector. The United States provided some 40 per cent of the total aid for global humanitarian funding until Donald Trump resumed services on January 20, 2025.
According to the findings of the study, the funding cuts could severely deal a blow to 20 years of progress achieved in the health sector among the vulnerable populations. The authors of the study, in a statement, said, "For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict".
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After carefully examining the data of over 133 nations, the team of researchers estimated that US funding had prevented a jaw-dropping 91 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. However, 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.
The numbers can easily surpass the casualty figures of World War 1, in which an estimated 10 million people were killed in five years. USAID funding was found to be particularly effective at staving off preventable deaths from disease. It is important to mention that US aid has prevented around 65 per cent of deaths related to HIV in the African continent alone. The role is so crucial that if the aid is not sustained by the other nations, it could have severe, catastrophic consequences on the continent.
"Now is the time to scale up, not scale back," said Rasella, the lead author of the study, adding, "I think most people would support continued USAID funding if they knew just how effective such a small contribution can be in saving millions of lives."
Dozens of countries, excluding the United States, are attending the UN conference in Spain to provide and commit financial support to the poor and vulnerable population of the world.
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