The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that US funding cuts would have “a devastating impact” on programmes battling tuberculosis, endangering millions of lives.
Global efforts to battle TB — the world’s deadliest infectious disease — have saved more than 79 million lives in the past two decades, averting around 3.65 million deaths last year alone, the United Nations health agency said.
But the “abrupt funding cuts” implemented to most US foreign aid spending since President Donald Trump returned to power in January “now threaten to undo these hard-won gains, putting millions —- especially the most vulnerable -— at grave risk,” WHO warned.
The warning came as the US Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Trump’s bid to freeze some $2 billion in foreign aid payments.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office demanding a 90-day freeze on all US foreign aid, to give his administration time to review overseas spending.
And he has essentially dismantled USAID, the primary organisation for distributing US humanitarian aid.
WHO said data it had received from the US government, national TB programmes and other sources showed Washington had been providing approximately a quarter of total international donor funding for TB — around $200 million to 250 million annually.
“The 2025 funding cuts will have a devastating impact on TB programmes,” WHO warned, highlighting the situation in low- and middle-income countries that rely heavily on international aid.
“These cuts put 18 of the highest-burden countries at risk, as they depended on 89 percent of the expected US funding for TB care,” it said.
The UN health agency said the African region was hardest hit by the funding disruptions, followed by the South-East Asian and Western Pacific regions.
“Any disruption to TB services — whether financial, political, or operational — can have devastating and often fatal consequences for millions worldwide,” Tereza Kasaeva, head of WHO’s global TB programme, said in the statement.
The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that, she said, pointing to the more than 700,000 excess deaths from TB recorded between 2020 and 2023.
“Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk,” she said.
(AFP)
