The sweeping U.S. cuts to foreign aid are potentially killing thousands of people a day due to factors like starvation and disease, a new report finds — after “shadow president” Elon Musk has claimed that “no one” has died to the supposed “brief pause” on aid funding that the administration is seemingly seeking to make permanent.
A report published on Saturday by The New York Times, citing estimates from the Center for Global Development, finds that the funding cuts will cause roughly 3 million people around the world to die within the next year.
This includes over 1.6 million people who may die from the lack of HIV and AIDS prevention provided by the U.S.; nearly 550,000 who will die without food aid; and 1 million who would die without vaccines and prevention for tuberculosis and malaria. Most of these people live in countries where they have nowhere else to turn for aid, largely concentrated in countries in eastern and southern Africa which have been exploited by Western powers for hundreds of years.
This means that, on an average day, roughly 9,000 people could die due to the lack of aid, the Center for Global Development found in its analysis.
Some foreign donors could step in to fill the gap left by the U.S. funding, but the U.S. gives the most in foreign aid annually worldwide in total dollars, making it unlikely that all of the deficit could be covered, the group said. With the defunding of these programs, they found, it “appears inevitable” that “deaths will continue to climb because of the disorder and confusion within USAID and the number of service providers who have already been forced to close down.”
When President Donald Trump took office, his administration announced that it would be carrying out a 90-day suspension of funding for foreign aid in order to supposedly “assess” their efficacy and “consistency with United States foreign policy.”
As part of these cuts, Elon Musk led a charge to eradicate the U.S. Agency for International Development — an agency that, though often criticized for its role in upholding U.S. imperialism abroad, plays a major role in disease prevention and humanitarian programs around the world.
Musk, who has been caught in numerous lies about his role in the Trump administration so far, said in a post on X earlier this month: “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one.”
But this isn’t true. First, it is misleading to call it a “brief pause,” as Trump has ordered the cancelation of 90 percent of U.S. foreign aid contracts, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that the administration has already cancelled 83 percent of them. Even if the cuts were temporary, it would take time to reestablish programs that were gutted overnight.
Second, even discounting the estimates of future deaths, countless people have already died due to the dismantling of foreign aid, as the Times has documented.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said that, in fact, it took him less than an hour after traveling to south Sudan to find someone who had died as a result of the funding suspensions.
This includes an orphan named Peter Donde, who had HIV transmitted from his mother during childbirth. His parents died of AIDS, but he was kept alive by medicine provided by U.S. aid, under a program known as President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The 10-year-old child, no longer able to access his medicine, died shortly after the funding was suspended, as the Times found. An outreach provider who worked with the boy said he would be alive today if USAID had stayed.
The World Health Organization said on Monday that the aid suspension could soon lead to lifesaving HIV treatment to be totally depleted in eight countries — Haiti, Kenya, Lesotho, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria and Ukraine.
“The disruptions to HIV programs could undo 20 years of progress” within a matter of months, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 10 days to add 500 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.