REUTERS: At least 161 deaths in Afghanistan have been linked to the disruption caused by US aid cuts over the past 18 months, according to new research by Refugees International.
Half of those who died were women who lost their lives during pregnancy or childbirth, while 30 were newborn or foetal deaths.
The Independent reported that a newborn was admitted to Nangarhar Regional Hospital in eastern Afghanistan in February last year with sepsis and birth asphyxia, requiring a constant oxygen supply to survive.
The oxygen plant supplying 50 paediatric beds had stopped functioning a month earlier, shortly after the Trump administration ordered a freeze on US foreign aid.
At least 180 health workers from a US-funded health project in the region had been laid off, and maintenance of critical equipment, including the oxygen plant, had ceased, Dr Shah Mohammed Qazizda, a doctor and former US Agency for International Development (USAID) project manager, told The Independent. The critically ill baby died.
Priyali Dipti Sur, a senior fellow with Refugees International, interviewed almost 550 healthcare workers across Afghanistan, many of them midwives, for the report, documenting accounts of shuttered healthcare centres and deaths she attributes to the fallout of the USAID cuts.
“These deaths are 100 percent preventable,” Sur said. “I think what people really need to understand is that when money doesn’t go into these organisations, to these sectors, to these hospitals, women, children and babies die.”
The US administration began dismantling its foreign aid programme almost immediately after Donald Trump returned to the White House in Jan 2025, freezing billions of dollars in assistance and moving to shut down USAID, The Independent reported.
Afghanistan, which had long relied heavily on international aid, was among the hardest-hit countries, with more than $1.7 billion (£1.2 billion) in assistance terminated abruptly, putting women and children at particular risk as obstetric and paediatric wards were among the most severely affected.
Maternity care has declined sharply since, with safe delivery services once available at US-supported Family Health Houses discontinued, affecting around 350 deliveries a month, according to figures from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health.
With hundreds of healthcare centres in remote areas now closed, pregnant women are having to travel hours to reach regional hospitals, and in some cases, documented by Sur, mothers and babies died before arrival. Some women could not find transport to hospital at all, while the lack of facilities has forced others into risking home births without medical support.
“If a woman in Washington, DC, or London, has a postpartum haemorrhage, she has access to a doctor and healthcare services and will probably survive,” Sur said. “But somebody in Balkh, for example, doesn’t have that; she does not survive.”
The Independent reported that babies requiring oxygen, like the one who died in Nangarhar, have died of asphyxia, as have children with pneumonia, while ventilators and incubators have stopped working due to a lack of funds for repairs. Sur said laid-off health workers, some of whom were their families’ main breadwinners, have also died by suicide.
Around 1,500 people employed by Dr Qazizda’s US-funded urban health initiative, run by the non-profit Jhpiego, lost their jobs across five provinces, according to The Independent.
The Nangarhar hospital became functional again with support from other funders, though resources remain limited. Dr Qazizda said neonatal mortality had increased by roughly 3 to 4 percent, and even more in other areas, while stabilisation services have been suspended and resuscitation capacity reduced.
“The health situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating day by day,” he said. “There are currently no adequate replacement resources to compensate for the impact of US funding cuts. If the gap continues, the consequences will also become increasingly severe.”
The Independent said it had contacted the US State Department for comment.
Separately, research published in BMJ Global Health in March found that Afghanistan’s health system had survived the Taliban takeover in 2021 but continued to face shortages of medicines, equipment and trained staff, with the country now facing a severe health and malnutrition crisis, The Independent noted.
Afghanistan has among the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, and one in ten children is now acutely malnourished, according to Save the Children, with nearly 600 health facilities closed.
The Independent also reported that Sur had collected public health data from 320 hospitals showing that overall deaths rose significantly from 2024 to 2025 and into the first half of 2026. While it is difficult to directly link these deaths to the aid cuts, Sur said the figures “clearly show that something is wrong.”
“Most of the aid in the last two decades, as well as the maternal healthcare sector, was funded by the US. They built close to 600 healthcare facilities, so when that aid left, maternal health severely suffered,” she said.
Sur is calling for US funding to be restored to Afghanistan’s healthcare sector and for unemployed midwives to be reinstated, noting that women have been disproportionately affected by job losses given their dominance in fields such as midwifery.
She also referenced Elon Musk, who was put in charge of Trump’s cost-cutting drive last year and played a central role in efforts to dismantle USAID. Musk had challenged critics on X to name a single person who had died as a result of the cuts, claiming none could be cited.
“I also want people to know the names of women and children who are dying,” Sur said, citing the case of a pregnant woman who died while being transferred to a regional hospital for care. “Her name was Halima,” she recounted.
