Few lifesaving tools are as effective as ready-to-use therapeutic foods, known as RUTFs, which are specially designed to treat severe malnutrition and often resemble fortified peanut butter. Despite announcing a $50 million pledged to fund RUTFs earlier this summer, the Trump administration's deep cuts to foreign assistance have wreaked havoc on RUTF distribution globally, and the State Department hasn’t placed orders with leading suppliers this year. Experts say the disruptions will result in more children dying from hunger.

“Stock is running critically low,” Clement Nkubizi, the country director for the nonprofit Action Against Hunger in South Sudan, tells WIRED. “People are going to die.”

The very existence of RUTFs is a secular miracle. Considered one of the greatest innovations in preventing deaths from hunger since they were invented in the 1990s, RUTFs increase success rates treating childhood malnutrition from 25 percent to over 90 percent, according to Action Against Hunger.

Since Donald Trump took office in January, foreign aid in the United States has been gutted beyond the point of recognition. On July 1, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) officially closed, leaving the State Department to administer some of its initiatives while wholly killing countless others. Throughout the radical dismantling of assistance programs, though, leaders like secretary of state Marco Rubio have insisted that certain lifesaving efforts would not be abandoned. Despite those assertions, critical programs have already been jettisoned, and some experts say the fatality toll from the cuts will be up to 14 million preventable deaths.

USAID directly funded around 50 percent of the world’s production of RUTFs. While the Trump administration has reinstated its RUTF contracts from 2024 after initially cutting them in March, US-based providers like MANA Nutrition and Edesia are still waiting for new orders from the US government.