NPR Investigation Names Three Children Who Died After USAID Cuts

For more than a year, senior Trump administration officials — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk — have publicly insisted that no children have died as a result of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. An investigation published July 17 by NPR directly contradicts that claim, documenting three specific cases in Nigeria and Kenya where parents and health workers say the loss of USAID-funded medical services played a decisive role in a child’s death.

The Administration’s Denials

In May 2025, Rubio testified before Congress that “no children are dying on my watch” and that “no one has died because of USAID [cuts].” More than a year later, on June 28-29, 2026, Musk posted on X that “deaths in Africa DECREASED after USAID funding was cut” and that critics “cannot cite a single name” of someone who died as a result. Musk, who as head of the Department of Government Efficiency presided over the agency’s shutdown, had previously described himself as “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

The Three Cases

Working with photojournalists from The Everyday Projects consortium, NPR identified three children whose deaths had a direct connection to the cutback in USAID-funded services. In each instance, reporters interviewed a parent and a health worker familiar with the case.

Abdullahi Ibrahim, age 10, of Sabon Gari, Nigeria, had suffered from asthma since he was five. His father, Ibrahim Musa, told NPR that the family relied on free medications and clinic visits that had been subsidized by USAID. When Abdullahi suffered a severe asthma attack last year, the clinic informed the family that USAID had stopped supplying free asthma medications. “If there was still help coming from USAID,” Musa said, “I’m very sure my child would still be alive today.”

Purity Wamboi, age 16, of Nairobi, Kenya, began experiencing a persistent cough and chest pain in August 2025. Her mother, Rachael Wanjiru, took her for treatment, but it took weeks to discover that Purity had tuberculosis — not pneumonia as initially diagnosed. Tabitha Mugweru, a community health promoter and family friend, said a more extensive team of USAID-funded health workers had once fanned out across Kenyan communities conducting home visits that could have caught the TB much earlier. When USAID funding dried up, most of those workers stopped. “If [USAID] did not withdraw their support,” Mugweru said, “maybe Purity could be alive today.”

Ibrahim Garba, age 8, of central Nigeria, contracted typhoid fever in early 2025. His family received free antibiotics and rehydration treatment at a local clinic, with staff telling them USAID was covering the costs. After Ibrahim improved, the family did not complete the full course of antibiotics — a common challenge in low-resource settings. When the typhoid rebounded, the family returned to find the medications were no longer free. Unable to afford the new round of drugs, they tried herbal remedies and prayed. Ibrahim died four days later.

The Broader Toll

The three cases represent a fraction of a much larger humanitarian crisis, according to public health experts. Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease modeler and health economist at Boston University, created the Impact Counter to project the death toll from the abrupt cessation of USAID funding. “Over the course of one year,” Nichols told NPR, “we estimate more than 700,000 people have died from the abrupt stopping of USAID, including more than half a million children.” A study published in The Lancet in July 2025 projected that USAID cuts could cause 14 million deaths by 2030.

The Administration’s Response

The State Department did not address the specifics of the three deaths when contacted by NPR. Instead, it pointed to the Trump administration’s signing of 32 bilateral global health memorandums of understanding (MOUs), including with Kenya and Nigeria, as evidence of a continued commitment to foreign health assistance. Dr. K.J. Seung of the Health Security Policy Academy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital noted that these MOUs represent a 23% decrease in U.S. health funding for Kenya and a 22% decrease for Nigeria compared with previous USAID levels.

A Question of Timing

Boston University’s Nichols acknowledged that the new MOU model could generate positive health outcomes over time. “But,” she cautioned, “that doesn’t answer the question as to whether or not deaths occurred because of how this all happened in the first place — the cutting overnight of aid.” She emphasized that the abrupt termination led to a breakdown of trust and supply chains that are challenging to rebuild. “It’s one thing to turn something off,” Nichols said. “It is something entirely different to turn something back on again.”

What Comes Next

The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID — which began with a funding freeze in January 2025 and culminated in the agency’s official closure in July 2025 — remains one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of the current administration. The NPR investigation puts human faces on a debate that has often been conducted in abstract numbers and political talking points. For the families of Abdullahi Ibrahim, Purity Wamboi, and Ibrahim Garba, the question of whether USAID cuts cost lives is not a matter of statistics. It is a matter of empty chairs at dinner tables and gravesites marked with white crosses.