Donald Trump’s decision to significantly reduce US funding for foreign humanitarian aid has the potential to lead to over 14 million additional deaths by the year 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday. Alarmingly, a third of those at risk are children.

In March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that the Trump administration had cut more than 80% of programs at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Davide Rasella, a co-author of the Lancet study, stated, “For many low- and middle-income countries, the resulting shock would be comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.” He further warned that these funding cuts “risk abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations.”

This report arrives as numerous global leaders convene this week in Seville, Spain, for the largest United Nations-led aid conference in a decade. Analyzing data from 133 nations, the research team estimated that between 2001 and 2021, USAID funding helped prevent 91 million deaths in developing countries. They also projected that the announced 83% funding reduction could result in over 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030, including more than 4.5 million children under the age of five, which translates to around 700,000 child deaths annually.

The Trump administration, alongside billionaire Elon Musk’s initiative to cut costs, is focused on reducing the federal workforce and has criticized USAID for allegedly backing liberal agendas. The US remains the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, operating in over 60 countries primarily through contractors.

Rubio mentioned that there are about 1,000 remaining programs that could be administered “more effectively” through the US State Department with Congress’s guidance. However, reports from UN workers indicate that on-the-ground conditions are deteriorating. A UN official recently noted that hundreds of thousands of people in Kenyan refugee camps are “slowly starving” due to cuts that have reduced food rations to unprecedented lows. In Kakuma, a hospital visit by the BBC revealed a malnourished baby barely able to move, exhibiting concerning signs such as peeling and wrinkled skin.