Deaths caused as a result of USAID defunding (since 2026)

Now, at Aug 23, 2026, 14:59:35 UTC

Methodology

Death estimates for years 2026-2030 were obtained from Cavalcanti D, de Oliveira Ferreira de Sales L, da Silva A et al.

These numbers, when plotted, we notice lie more or less in a line, so we can assume that the median rate of change of deaths is linear in nature, and thus, the function of cumulative deaths depending on the time must be a second-degree polynomial. By curve-fitting the cumulative deaths to a second-degree polynomial and, for the sake of sanity, setting the constant part to 0, we get values pretty close to those in the paper.

Note: don’t expect these to be 100% accurate. The counters are here to roughly visualise the ungodly amount of lives lost due to USAID’s defunding

Motive

After the second inauguration of Donald Trump, unelected billionare Elon Musk was appointed as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), supposedly to rid the U.S. government of billions of dollars wasted due to government inefficiency. Apart from actually costing the federal government more than $21.7 billion (The $21.7 Billion Blunder: New PSI Report Reveals Billions in Taxpayer Dollars Squandered by DOGE), DOGE dissolved USAID, a foreign aid agency of the U.S. government that was estimated to have saved between 4.1 and 4.7 million lives per year, including between 1.2 and 1.7 million children under five for the years 2001-2024. (Cavalcanti D, de Oliveira Ferreira de Sales L, da Silva A et al.). As it can be easily understood, the defunding of such an agency would inevitably result is a large amount of deaths. The study which this estimation model uses predicts a little more than 14 million people in total and 4.5 million children under 5 dead for the years 2026-2030 due to this move. Just to picture this, that is an average of 324 deaths PER HOUR for all age groups (104 deaths for children under 5).

These people aren’t just numbers on a study: they have their own lives and their own families and all of them could have been alive in 2030 had it not been for the defunding of USAID by an edgy memelord.

Support

There are some things you can do to at the very least mitigate the effects of the defunding to some degree.

U.S. citizens

The defunding of the USAID was orchestrated by the second Trump administration, so it it important to show them your disagreement. Midterm elections are gonna take place in November, so make sure to register to vote before then. Recent polls show the Democrats leading the race, so if you want to keep the current momentum, make sure to vote.

Contact your House representative and your senators. Tell your Republican ones that you disagree with the administration’s policies on the matter, but also make sure to tell the Democrats to refund USAID once they are back in office. Even if damage has been already done, it is better to at least have a functioning USAID from 2028 onwards than none at all.

All around the world

Humanitarian

There are a number of NGOs that provide humanitarian aid to whom you can donate. Here are a few of the most prominent ones that are generally regarded as neutral:

• ActionAid
• Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
• Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World)
• UNICEF
• World Food Program (WFP)

Domain support

I am currently hosting this website on a subdomain of my personal site. If you feel like this isn’t exactly suitable for a site like this, you are free to buy an appropriate domain for this website. In any case, I’d much rather you donate to any one of the humanitarian organization mentioned above, but if you end up buying a domain, send me an email to transfer it over to me (my personal email can be found on my personal site)