A global catastrophe looms–one entirely of our making, yet still within our power to avert. A stark new study from The Lancet forecasts 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five. Read that again, for this would mean 700,000 extra child deaths every year.
At the forefront of this retreat, the United States has slashed its foreign aid budget, gutting USAID, which once accounted for over 40% of global humanitarian relief. The agency has seen its funding slashed by a staggering 83%, reducing its capacity to respond to global health emergencies from 50 staff members to just 6. Such reductions amount to a gut punch to the very infrastructure that prevents suffering and saves lives. Other Western nations, including the UK and France, have followed suit, creating a perilous void. The consequences are already unfolding: health clinics are closing, life-saving medicines are disappearing, and thousands of aid workers are losing their jobs in the world’s most vulnerable regions.
To claim that these nations should simply “stand on their own” is, for lack of a better word, reckless. Foreign aid, which makes up less than 1.3% of the U.S. federal budget, is a small price to pay for global stability. The cost of inaction is far greater. The 2003 SARS outbreak led to $30 billion in economic losses, and the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic cost $53 billion. When health systems collapse, diseases spill across borders, and similarly, when populations face despair, refugee flows intensify.
History offers a cautionary tale. In the 1930s, the US turned inward, focusing on domestic issues while global tensions surged. As a result of which the world plunged into World War II. Today’s retreat from global engagement risks igniting a similar disaster. Abandoning fragile states will not only deepen their crises but send shockwaves across the globe.
Every second of delay is a second closer to the loss of millions of lives. We would have to realise that foreign aid is not a charitable donation. It is an investment in global peace, security, and economic stability. USAID-backed programs have, over the last two decades, prevented 91 million deaths: a tangible, irreplaceable return on investment. If we allow these cuts to stand, we risk not just the survival of millions but the erasure of decades of hard-won progress. The cuts threaten to reverse a 74% decline in HIV/AIDS mortality, a 53% reduction in malaria deaths, and a 32% drop in child mortality. Are we ready to go back to the future? *