A new study warns that continued cuts to international development aid could result in an estimated 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030 across 93 low- and middle-income countries, including 5.4 million children under the age of five. The research highlights the severe human cost of declining global aid at a time when many countries remain heavily dependent on external funding for essential health and development services.
Conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the study analysed data from 2002 to 2021 to assess how changes in official development assistance affect mortality outcomes. The countries examined are home to about 6.3 billion people, representing nearly three-quarters of the world’s population, making the projected impacts both widespread and profound.
Although global official development assistance reached a record high in 2023, major donor countries began reducing their contributions in 2024, marking the first overall decline in international aid in six years. Several leading donors significantly cut funding, and the dismantling of the United States’ international development agency further accelerated the trend. Key global health initiatives, including funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, have experienced sharp reductions, raising concerns about the sustainability of past health gains.
The study demonstrates that international aid has historically played a critical role in saving lives, contributing to major reductions in child mortality, deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies over the past two decades. Researchers modelled two future scenarios, finding that even moderate funding cuts could lead to millions of preventable deaths, while more severe and sustained reductions could reverse decades of development progress.
Beyond direct health impacts, the research emphasizes that aid cuts weaken healthcare systems, reduce the availability of medical professionals, and limit disease surveillance and preparedness for epidemics and climate-related shocks. The authors argue that development aid delivers benefits that extend beyond immediate lifesaving, supporting global stability, economic resilience, and shared security, and caution that framing aid as a domestic political trade-off risks overlooking its long-term global and national value.
