USAID officially dissolved; Lancet study projects 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 (July 1, 2025 )
July 1, 2025 — Secretary of State Rubio confirmed that USAID had officially ceased to exist as of July 1, 2025 — the end of a 60-year-old agency created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to promote development and alleviate poverty. The same day, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published a peer-reviewed study by researchers from Europe, Africa, and South America that analyzed the impact of USAID programs in 133 low- and middle-income countries over 20 years, then modeled the consequences of the 83 percent funding cuts announced in 2025.
The study found that USAID-funded programs had prevented an estimated 91 million deaths between 2001 and 2021, associated with a 15 percent reduction in all-cause mortality in recipient countries and a 32 percent reduction in under-five child mortality. Its projections for what would happen if the cuts continued were stark: more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under the age of five — approximately 700,000 extra child deaths per year, a toll the researchers noted exceeded the total military deaths in World War I. The 95 percent uncertainty interval placed the range at 8.5 to 19.7 million deaths.
Former Presidents Bush and Obama — whose administrations had built the programs being dismantled — both recorded remarks for USAID staff. Bush, creator of PEPFAR, was among the administration's most prominent Republican critics. Multiple independent research teams using different methodologies converged on projections of similar magnitude, lending unusual scientific confidence to the core finding.
| https://abcnews.com/Health/usaid-programs-now-run-state-department-agency-ends/story?id=123373289 |
The Lancet study is available here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext