Refugees International Report Links 161 Afghan Deaths to 2025 US Foreign Aid Cuts, State Department Denies Casualties

What the report found

Refugees International spent six months surveying 555 front-line health workers across 30 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and pulling mortality data from more than 320 hospitals and clinics in six provinces, according to the organization's August 2026 report. Researchers identified 161 deaths they classify as "high-confidence" and preventable, linked to the collapse of health services after the United States froze foreign aid.

The breakdown: 80 maternal deaths, 30 newborn or fetal deaths, 14 child deaths, 26 adult deaths, and 11 where the age wasn't specified, according to amu.tv's summary of the report. Refugees International is explicit that this is not a national estimate. Researchers excluded any case they couldn't clearly verify or that might have been double-counted, calling 161 a conservative floor, not a ceiling.

One case detailed by The Independent: a newborn arrived at Nangarhar Regional Hospital in February 2025 with sepsis and birth asphyxia, needing constant oxygen. The oxygen plant feeding 50 pediatric beds had stopped working a month earlier, after 180 health workers on a US-funded project were laid off, according to Dr. Shah Mohammed Qazizda, a former USAID project manager. The baby died.

The money and the jobs

In January 2025, the Trump administration froze billions in foreign assistance worldwide and moved to dismantle USAID. Afghanistan lost more than $1.7 billion in committed assistance, including roughly $736.6 million in annual humanitarian funding, according to the Refugees International report. The US had supplied 43% to 45% of Afghanistan's reported humanitarian funding in 2024.

The workforce hit was severe. Of the 555 health workers surveyed, 383 were midwives, and 260 of them, 68%, said they lost their jobs because of the cuts. Among the remaining 172 workers in other roles, 130, or 76%, reported losing their jobs too. Nearly 60% of respondents said their facility had already closed; another 12% said theirs was on the verge of closing.

Hospital records in Nangarhar showed institutional deliveries dropped 5.6%, from 25,586 in 2024 to 24,147 in 2025, while neonatal deaths rose roughly 51%, from 79 to 119, according to amu.tv's reporting on the data. The World Health Organization had recorded more than 420 health facility closures or suspensions across Afghanistan by October 2025, according to a Foreign Policy piece written by the Refugees International researchers themselves.

Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health told The Independent that the shutdown of US-supported Family Health Houses has affected roughly 350 deliveries a month, forcing women in remote provinces to travel hours to regional hospitals. Some, per Priyali Dipti Sur, the Refugees International senior fellow who led the survey, never made it.

Rubio's denial versus the data

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress in May 2025 that no one had died because of the aid cuts, saying "No children are dying on my watch," according to Foreign Policy. That statement is now directly disputed by the same organization whose researchers wrote the Foreign Policy piece, making the argument that their own survey and hospital data contradict Rubio's claim. The State Department's response to the specific 161-death figure isn't included in the available reporting.

What this data can and can't prove matters. The 161 figure comes from a mix of self-reported recall by health workers, many of whom lost their own jobs in the cuts, combined with facility records from only six of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Refugees International itself flags this as a conservative estimate rather than a verified national count, and independent verification is difficult in a country where the US has no government presence and the Taliban controls access. That's a real limitation, not a reason to dismiss the finding outright, but it means the true toll could be higher or the causal chain in individual cases could be more complicated than a single survey response captures.

A fair accounting of the other side of this debate: the administration's broader aid freeze was framed around auditing waste and redirecting spending, and Afghanistan's aid pipeline runs through a country controlled by a Taliban regime under US and international sanctions, a genuine complication for any argument that Washington should simply restore funding unconditionally. Neither of the outlets here quotes a specific administration rebuttal to the 161-death figure beyond Rubio's blanket denial.

Refugees International says it plans continued monitoring of Afghan health facility closures. The unresolved question is whether the State Department will respond directly to the report's province-by-province hospital data, rather than repeat a general denial that predates the report's publication.