Research published in The Lancet medical journal says funding cuts ordered by US President Donald Trump to foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.

A third of those at risk of premature death were children, the researchers estimate.

The BBC quotes the co-author of the report, Davide Rasella, as saying that low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock “comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict”.

Rasella and his fellow researchers estimate that USAID funding prevented more than 90 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.

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

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

[Image: ‪Salah Darwish on Unsplash]


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