The United States' decision to slash its foreign aid funding gutted maternal and child health programs around the world. Those funding cuts, along with cuts to foreign aid by other countries, led the Gates Foundation to predict that 2025 will be the first year this century where child deaths will rise.
In Nepal, The Associated Press found that the U.S. funding cuts have been linked to increased pregnancy complications and deaths. The AP interviewed health workers, government officials, aid workers, and families who said cuts to programs that ensured uneducated, impoverished pregnant women got proper nutrition and prenatal care have led to more babies and pregnant women dying.
Yet many deaths linked to the funding cuts will remain invisible, in part because the cuts themselves left scores of mortality data collectors jobless. In some places, there is simply no one left to count the dead.
AP journalists Kristen Gelineau and Bram Janssen traveled to villages in rural Nepal to document these previously invisible deaths, and to tell the stories of the women and babies whose lives were lost after a foreign policy decision made half a world away.
Caption: Rajkumari Patel, a community health worker trained to ensure impoverished pregnant women in rural Nepal receive timely prenatal care, is shown in her home in Gaur, Nepal, on May 20, 2026. Image by Bram Janssen/Associated Press.
