Lancet study projects 14 million deaths from aid cuts
NPR worked with photojournalists who are part of a global consortium called The Everyday Projects to identify the names of children whose deaths over the past year and a half had a strong connection to the cutback in services provided by USAID funding. The report examined the deaths of Abdullahi and two other children. In each instance, NPR interviewed a parent of the child and a health worker familiar with the case.
NPR reached out to the U.S. State Department to ask for comments on the three cases in Nigeria and Kenya. The department did not address the specifics of their deaths. In its response, the department pointed to the Trump administration’s signing of 32 bilateral global health memorandums of understanding, including with Kenya and Nigeria.
The deaths come as the Trump administration has maintained that no children have died because of the cuts. The administration’s team has said no children died from the USAID cutbacks, according to NPR.
Researchers from the Lancet medical journal estimate that the cuts could lead to more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, according to the BBC and CNN. That would include the deaths of more than 4.5 million children under the age of five, the BBC reported.
In Sudan, which has been ravaged by war and gripped by famine, a mother watched two of her children under the age of three die from malnutrition after a soup kitchen that had been supported by USAID closed overnight, according to a press release from Sen. Schatz.
The Bulwark reported that many people, including many children, have died as a direct result of the cuts made to USAID. The agency was established in 1961 to end extreme global poverty, promote democracy, and advance U.S. interests.