USAID Formally Shut Down - Days After Scientists Warn Closure Will Kill 2.4 Million People Every Year

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/usaid-shut-down-lancet-millions-deaths/

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the official end of USAID, eliminating the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency just days after a landmark study warned the closure would cause 2.4 million preventable deaths every year.

The study published 30 June in The Lancet found USAID-supported programs saved 92 million lives in low- and middle-income countries over the past two decades, including 30.4 million children under the age of five. Without this support, researchers project 14 million additional premature deaths by 2030 – as a result of the closure of the agency founded in 1961.

“Unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030,” warned the 15 authors of the study, led by researchers at Barcelona’s ISGlobal and five other Spanish institutes, the Institute of Collective Health in Brazil, the Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça, Mozambique, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Rubio has ignored such warnings.

In a State Department memo titled “Make Foreign Aid Great Again” announcing the shutdown, Rubio laid into USAID, stating its “charity-based” model was against American interests and that it spawned “a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense.” He also attacked recipient countries and regions – notably Sub-Saharan Africa – for not repaying the US with UN votes despite billions in aid.