December 30, 2025

The cost of cuts: Western reductions in foreign aid are creating a worldwide crisis in healthcare

Domestic spending on vaccines and medications, subsidies for paying medical staff, and programs supporting mothers and newborns are being rapidly reduced in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe. At the same time, global health aid to low-income countries has fallen to its lowest level in 15 years, dropping by half since the end of the Covid pandemic. Funding for efforts to combat the three most widespread diseases — HIV, tuberculosis and malaria — are shrinking as well, leaving millions of the most vulnerable adults and children worldwide at risk. Bill Gates, the globe’s largest private donor, predicts that “2025 will be the first year since the start of the century when child mortality not only fails to decline, but actually rises.” If these trends are not reversed, a new wave of increasingly desperate migrants could soon be arriving in the same countries that have recently reduced their budgets for foreign aid.