“Tens of thousands of children have died ...”

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) implemented cuts that eliminated more than 80% of USAID's $42 billion budget overnight, freezing funding for critical programs including food assistance, clean water initiatives, and disease outbreak responses. Boston University professor Brooke Nichols created a mathematical model predicting these cuts would cause hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths within months, primarily from treatable conditions like diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition due to the loss of basic medical interventions and food programs. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio has denied these death toll predictions as "fake," aid workers report that funding remains suspended despite some waivers, with the cuts particularly devastating programs that were on track to end the AIDS pandemic by 2030.

“The World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian food provider, had projected a 40 per cent decrease in funding compared with last year and warned of the life-threatening consequences.

“These are 100 per cent preventable deaths,” Nichols added. “They all happened because of the abrupt halt in funding.”

Nichols said the death toll would not be so high had the administration phased out funding over a 12-month period, which would have allowed for contingency planning.”

Read the full article at The Times.

See the human impact of these cuts at the Impact Dashboard.