UN warns maternal deaths in Afghanistan may rise after US funding pause

GENEVA: A key UN health agency warned on Tuesday that Washington´s aid cut could see 1,200 more women die from pregnancy and birth-linked causes in Afghanistan through 2028.

Shortly after his inauguration last month, Trump signed an executive order implementing a 90-day pause in US foreign development aid.

His administration later issued waivers for food and other humanitarian aid, but aid workers say that the impact is already being felt by some of the world´s most vulnerable.

In response, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) “has suspended services funded by US grants that provide a lifeline for women and girls in crises, including in South Asia”, said Pio Smith, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency´s regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

“We´re pretty concerned about that substantial loss in funding,” he told reporters in Geneva.

He said the situation was particularly dramatic in Afghanistan, where a mother already dies from preventable pregnancy complications every two hours, making it one of the deadliest countries in the world for women to give birth.

For Afghanistan, “between 2025 and 2028 we estimate that the absence of US support will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths and 109,000 additional unintended pregnancies”, Smith said.

The agency provides sexual and reproductive health services in more than 150 countries, working to prevent maternal deaths, end gender-based violence, and ensure access to family planning.

The agency, which says US contributions allowed it to prevent worldwide 3,800 likely deaths during pregnancy in 2023 alone, is meanwhile accustomed to seeing its funding cut during Republican administrations in Washington.

“We´ve been working on the understanding that, like previous Republican administrations... the agency would be defunded,” Smith acknowledged, saying efforts had been made to mitigate the risk.

But Smith said the agency had not expected the United States to halt funds already committed to UNFPA by the giant USAID humanitarian agency, which it has now done.

The stop order, he said “is for funds that have already been committed to the agency, and what we see is that programmes that have been focusing on maternal and reproductive health and psychosocial support will be affected”.

“Women give birth alone, in unsanitary conditions... Newborns die from preventable causes. Survivors of gender-based violence have nowhere to turn for medical or psychological support,” he said. “This is not about statistics. This is about real lives.”