A study published Monday found that the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) could result in more than 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths of children younger than 5 years.
The findings were released hours before Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency would officially shut down following President Trump’s executive order earlier this year aiming to dismantle the agency.
Many of the deaths are expected to occur in the African countries of Nigeria and Uganda due to the loss of funding for maternal and child health aid, in addition to epidemic and emerging disease surveillance.
Researchers found that those two countries would contribute 107,000 additional deaths globally in just one year under a disrupted malaria-control supply chain.
The end of USAID pulls funding from nongovernmental organizations including the U.N. World Food Programme, which closed its southern Africa office, placing 27 million people at risk of hunger amid the country’s worst drought in decades, the study says.
Former Presidents Obama and Bush have been critical of the Trump administration for the USAID closure, which also threatens to scale back America’s role in the global fight against HIV and AIDS.
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” Obama said, according to The Associated Press.
Rubio on Tuesday defended the shuttering of USAID, arguing the agency’s objectives were often left unmet.
“Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end.”
The Monday study found that USAID-supported efforts have helped to prevent more than 91 million deaths across all age groups, including 30 million deaths among children.
It said high levels of USAID funding were associated with a 15 percent reduction in mortality across all ages, a 65 percent reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS, a 51 percent reduction from malaria, and a 50 percent reduction from neglected tropical diseases.
In 2022, USAID was responsible for more than half of nutritional interventions, food distribution and agricultural interventions globally.
“Therefore, the impact of USAID on health and mortality reduction extends beyond its direct funding of health programmes and interventions,” the study’s authors wrote.
“In particular, USAID’s support for poverty alleviation, education, and water and sanitation interventions—among many others—might have had a substantial effect on health outcomes, also considering the broader spillover effects these interventions can have on entire communities,” the authors added. “Indeed, poverty alleviation interventions alone have demonstrated important effects on reducing both adult and child mortality.”
The research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, U.K. Medical Research Council and EU Horizon Europe.
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